Oh how they change

As I have been getting ready to move I have also been going through old pictures on my computer trying to delete blurry/duplicate/not very good pictures to make our computer not so slow and to make a back up CD of our pictures. The last time I did this (about 6 months ago) I only went through pictures I had taken since Maddie was born and deleted over 9000 pictures!

In going through my pictures this time around I found this picture of Madison from the beginning of the summer...

Can you believe how much she has changed in 3 short months? She went from my little baby to my big girl! I never even realized that she had chubby cheeks until I compared these two pictures and see how not-chubby her cheeks are now.

We went in for Madison's 2 year old check up this week and Madison's stats are still pretty much the same as they have always been. She is in the 25th percentile for weight and 70th percentile for height. Her head is still in the 95th percentile (can you believe her head is that big?)

A Tea Party for Maddie!

Yesterday was Madison's 2nd birthday! We had a lot fun celebrating with friends and family. Here are a few picture of our fun Tea Party Evening. (note to family: Please share your pictures from last night with me since I was too busy getting everything ready to take many pictures.)

My favorite part of the night. My aunt Diane collects old fashioned hats and was kind enough to let us borrow them for our party. Every person there had a had to wear, including the boys!

The whole group in our hats.

Maddie made quite the haul. I guess when you have such a big family, that's not a hard thing to do. She got lots of new fun toys and very cute fall clothes and her Grandpa even made her, her very own beautiful tea table. You can't see if very well in the picture but it is absolutely amazing. Madison (and her siblings) will love this table for many years to come.

We ate lots of yummy food, not your normal party food, but yummy none the less.

And lots of fun times with good friends.

Maddie loved everything she got- From Pea coats to umbrella's.

And she even got to enjoy her favorite treat for dessert- Jello Jigglers!

Doesn't she look cute in her cute new Princess night gown?

Thank you everyone for coming to our party and Thanks for all the wonderful gifts!

HaPpY BiRtHdAy MaDiSoN Jo!!!!

2 year old photo shoot!

My friend Jess and I went out and took Maddie's 2 year old pictures last week. I love LOVE love them. I think they did a good job at capturing her personality. The only problem... she doesn't look like my "little baby" anymore!

Cookie Call!!!!

CALLING ALL FRIENDS!!!!I was just looking at my cousin Monica's blog and found the coolest idea ever. She and a bunch of her girl friends got together and had a chocolate chip cookie bake off to see who really makes the best chocolate chip cookies (since we all think our recipe is the best!) They had 3 different categories: Classic Chocolate Chip, the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Plus and Specialty. They all cooked their cookies then got together to do the judging. They used secret names for the cookies so no one would know who had made what cookie to make the judging even more fair. I think it looks like a lot of fun. Check out her post here to see for yourself.

Anyway, I suggest that we too have a Cookie Fest 2009 as soon as I move in to my new house where we would have plenty of space to party (which will be in about 2 weeks.) So if any of you are interested in joining in on the fun please leave me a comment. If you don't leave me a comment I will probably seek you out and make you join in on the fun anyway. Ü

Birthday Party

Dear Family,

As you all know, Madison is turning two this Friday. I have invitations all printed out and ready to send to invite you to her birthday party but seeing as it is already Tuesday and I still haven't sent them I thought I would make my announcement here. I will still send you your invite in the mail but you may not get it before the party. If you are planning on coming please let me know so I can be prepared for you all. We are so excited to see you at our tea party!

Love Always, Liz

Thanks to my dear friend Jess for taking these cute pictures and for making the invitation for me!

Moving day is just around the corner

The time has finally come.

Time for us to pack up our apartment we've been living in for the last 3+ years.

It's moving time!!!

Since we are moving in about 2 weeks and I haven't had a single weekend at home this whole summer, or rather hardly even any week days at home this summer, I have not had much time to prepare for this move. Being 7 months pregnant and having a husband who is starting school a week from Monday I was starting to get really nervous about how I was going to make it all happen.

And then my Angel arrived.

Wednesday my mom decided to come up and help me start packing and cleaning. She stayed until Thursday night, by which point we were both so exhausted from working too hard that we were pretty much useless the rest of the night. Needless to say, we got a lot accomplished. We scrubbed windows and walls as well as packed a good share of boxes. By the time she left I felt a lot better about being able to get everything done I need to before we move.

Thank you Thank you Thank you Mom for coming to help me out.

So what did Madison do while we worked you may ask?

Followed right behind us so that she could very efficiently undo the cleaning we had done of course.

Wearing Daddy's church shoes and socks

Playing dress up with all of the clothes she found packed away such as her purple dress from the wedding (inside out of course) and an old jumper on her head.At least she played happily by herself, even if we did have to redo a lot of what we had already done before.

Hot dogs, pita pizza's and tin foil dinners- Oh my!

Yesterday for family night Karl's family decided to go up the canyon to have dinner around the fire. We ate hot dogs, pita pizza's and tin foil dinners as my title says- random I know- but very delicious!

Madison and Ivy even got to eat at their very own picnic table- Popop won it at his work golf tournament this year- the girl's love it.

Madison discovered she had gotten some ranch on her arm. So what did she do about it???

She decided to lick it off! How appetizing.
What a cute family picture huh? Too bad that Madison was in it for Lacey and Steve's sake and too bad Karl and I weren't in it for our sake. We can NEVER get Maddie to look at the camera and smile cute for family pictures.

I love this picture of Ivy. It looks like she is putting on a great show for all of us.

Nana and her girls

What a great night for a picnic up the canyon. We all had so much fun. Thanks Nana and Popop for the idea and the good food.

Camping

This weekend our little family got to go camping with my family. I forgot to take very many pictures but we did have a fun few days. Madison was really clingy the last day we were camping and wasn't quite her usual happy-hyper self but still did pretty good. When we got home she had a 103 degree temperature- we still don't know what was causing the temperature but she seems to be fine now. She does have at least 2 new teeth that have broken through the skin so maybe that was it. Anyway, here are the few pictures I took.

My string doesn't fit!

When I was pregnant with Madison my friends threw me a baby shower where we played the game where everyone has to try and cut a string the size of your belly. My mother-in-law must have thought I was huge because her string was exactly twice the size it should have been! I ended up keeping the string that was the correct size of how big I was when I was nine months pregnant so that I could compare each pregnancy down the road.

Well today I decided to try out the string....

Let's just say, I wasn't very pleased with the results.

You have to look closely but I can't even touch the strings together!

I still have 3 months left!!!

And I am already bigger then I was at 9 months with Maddie.
Please tell me that I just got big faster and that I'm not going to continue to get lots bigger.

"A home!"

We finally made it home, or as Maddie would like to say "A home!". Although our vacation was absolutely incredible, we are all glad to be back home in our own beds again.

Our last day of vacation was our "lazy" day where we just spent a lot of time being lazy and playing at the beach. It was a much better day to spend at the beach then the first day we went. It wasn't windy and it wasn't freezing cold! Here are the picture.

Karl's dad, Katie and I decided to go explore one beach while everyone else took naps or did their own thing. It was a beautiful beach!

Katie and I were trying to make a picture to put at the top of her blog by trying to write the blog title in the sand. Everytime we would get almost done writing the letters a tide would come up and wash it away. The closest we got was Kate's Corn (It was supposed to say Kate's Corner)

Later we went back out to another beach but this time we brought most of the family with us. Madison liked the beach a lot better then she did the first time. (We didn't have to hold her the whole time!) She still didn't like getting "dirty" but loved crawling on the ground with Ivy and running away from the waves.

Pop pop and his girls

These were the stairs we had to go down to get to the beach. There were 100 steps... I counted :)

On our way back to the condo we found this boat and had to take a picture with it!

Finally we had to say goodbye to the beautiful beaches and cooler temperatures and head home. We had a wonderful week and are grateful that Karl's parents were willing to share their time share with us all so we were able to vacation for cheaper and have money to spend on other adventures while we were there. We love you guys!!!