Starlette

Audrey?  Audrey Hepburn - is that you???

Big girl coloring

I'm not sure why but when Esme lays on her tummy and has her feet up in the air, she seems like such a big girl to me.

Right now coloring is her favorite thing.  She found her birthday card and had a blast with it.

Handy Esme

What a good helper we have.  She really likes working with her dad.

And she looks really cute in a hard hat! :)

Playing with Alyssa

We are lucky to live close to friends.  Friends like Alyssa.  Esme was very excited to hold on to Alyssa's hand.

It will be fun to watch these two girls become friends. :)

Let's try this again!

This afternoon we went to another Twins game.  This time it was beautiful out, a perfect day for a baseball game.  Not too hot and a nice breeze.

Most importantly, the Twins actually won!  I think that's the first game I've EVER gone to where they've won.

Go Twins! :)

Dance!

Annika and Laurel had a dance recital today and I got to go watch.  It was so much more than I expected!  I thought it would be in a gym with some kids dancing.  But there were crazy light shows and detailed costumes.  The dancers ranged from little girls to seniors in high school.  Very professional! :)

Afterwards we all went out for dinner and celebrated Jodie's birthday and Father's day.

Esme wasn't smiling for the picture, so I kept trying to get her to smile and this is what I got.

Uffda.

Artist in the making

As I was painting the picnic table that Aaron and I made for Esme (more on that later), she thought she should be painting too.

Later that day she was laying on the floor watching TV.  I have no idea why, but whenever she lays on the floor like this she seems like such a big girl to me.  :) and :(

Rain Out!

Aaron and I were invited to go to a Twins game with our friends Kim and Ken.  We met at Hubert's to eat and it started to rain.  And then it kept raining.  The game was delayed for an hour and then finally declared a rain out.

Looks like we get to try again next time the White Sox are in town. :)

Oak Tree

When I look at Esme, I know she's changed a lot over the last year, but in my memories of her she looks like she does now.  Does that make sense?  That's why it's just fascinating to me to compare pictures from last year until now.

2010

2011

I can't possibly imagine what next year will look like. :)

Guess who's 2 ????

Esme's 2.  I can't believe it!

Her birthday was on a Wednesday and our party was on the following Saturday.  Everyone came over and it was a great day!

Thank you Grandma Gini!

The Tools!

Cousins having a great time!

Watering the flowers with Papa

Jodie and the newest member of the family - April

I had a video of Annika hula hooping, but it won't upload.  I think she could hula hoop all day!  She's a star!  

Thanks everyone for coming and celebrating.  We had such a great time!  

I'm so cool!

Esme doesn't care if it's day or night, if she wants to wear her sunglasses she wears them.

My thought is that she might have had better aim if she could see a little better.  Next time sun glasses off for eating. :)

Babies!

We have some baby birds in a nest right next to our deck!

It sure makes Mom nervous when we're peaking in there and looking at her babies.

squack squack!

Computer whiz in the making

Esme is already teaching me things about electronics!  And she loves to play with my iPhone.  She runs around saying "Mommy's phone" over and over when she wants to play.  Aaron has an iTouch and she will actually ask for that too "Daddy's iTouch"!

I can't imagine what the world will be like when she's my age.  She'll probably be flying her car to work!

Poor Cricket

Poor, poor Cricket has been sick again.  She has another case of HGE which is Hemorrhagic GastroEnteritis.  She had this one other time about 3 years ago and had to spend a couple of days in the hospital.  At the time we thought it was from licking the back of a grill which is a pretty common way for dogs to get it.

A couple of days after we got back from North Dakota we got home from work and found diarrhea and bloody diarrhea and vomit all over the house.  Yuck.  So the next day I took Cricket to the vet and we found out that she had it again.  Dr. Bull ended up being her doctor because she was on call.  Normally we have Dr. Morrow.  They kept her for a couple of days (but I got to bring her home at night).  Mostly they gave her fluids and medication by IV because she couldn't keep anything down.  Then at night we had to make sure she didn't drink any water or eat anything.

This is Cricket on her way home from the vet with her IV

3 days and $700 later we visited with Dr. Morrow and she pointed out that it had been 7 days after Cricket got her rabies vaccine that she got really sick.  She looked back and saw that 3 years ago she got sick 10 days after her rabies vaccine.  They only get that vaccine every 3 years.  So she's wondering if there's a component of it related to that.  We did see her licking the grill last time so I think that was definitely part of it, but it's quite a coincidence with the vaccine.

Dr. Morrow suggested that if Cricket doesn't get sick in the next 3 years then we should definitely pre-medicate her before the next vaccine.  I couldn't agree more!

North Dakota

This Memorial Day we made the road trip to North Dakota.  Esme does pretty well on the drive, but the girl will not sleep.  We usually leave St. Michael at about 5am thinking she'll sleep a bit.  Nope, never happens.  So we have lots of things to entertain her, including M&M's.

Esme was super happy to finally get to New England.  You would think the last thing she would want to do is get in another car.  But she discovered hanging out in Papa's pick up which is a lot more fun.  She loved it!  They spent quite almost an hour out there!

She was taking the CD in and out of the CD player, pushing the garage door opener and wreaking havoc with his stereo system.

Lately Esme likes to do her own hair with headbands.  When we stopped in Fargo to walk around and give her a break from the car we went to Target.  Starbucks for mommy and snacks and headbands for Esme.  Later she modeled for us!

While we were home Esme, Aaron and Papa took the dogs up to the school playground.  Esme got Papa to play, but there was no way he was giving up his bottle!

Cricket and Kaiser even had fun.  They love to chase each other.  Mostly Kaiser chases Cricket, but if he stops and she's not ready to be done she will run up and attack him until he chases her again!

I just love this action shot of Kaiser not touching the ground

We left New England on Monday morning and headed for home.  The first thing Esme did was ask for her pillow and this is what she did.

It looked promising, but it wasn't.  That lasted about 10 seconds after I took the picture.  She was awake the whole way home!  As usual, she did pretty well.  Thank goodness!