First Day of Preschool

I can't believe that Tavian started preschool this year.  How is my little boy already ready for that?!? 

We actually started with a different plan for him and then changed things up pretty last minute.  Last winter we enrolled him at Redeemer Lutheran (a Chirstian preschool close to our house) and he was going to go two times a week for two hours.  I really like the school and the teacher, but when we originally enrolled him we didn't know we would be expecting a baby in early January, so we were ok with settling for the afternoon class at the time.  Once I really thought about what that would be like with a new baby, I realized it was going to be more of a hassel then a help.  Who wants to wake a sleeping baby up from their afternoon nap two days a week??  Not this momma!  Plus it was going to be a heafty added expense, more so of course when adding another member to the family.

Instead we decided to put him in an in house Montessori preschool in my sister Sarahs neighborhood.  She has enrolled her kiddos in programs through the same lady and had great experiences.  This seemed like a much better option for us.  It is only one morning a week, saves us some money, and I think Tavian had a much easier adjustment joining something on a smaller scale.  There are only 4 or 5 kids in his "classs".  The first few visits were a little hard when I tried to leave, but overall he has done great.  The best part is that he really loves it and he really loves his teacher, Mrs. Joy!

What a handsome Big Boy!

We talked a lot about how he would be starting preschool in weeks leading up to it, and he was pretty adimint that he didn't want to.  I believe his words were "I only want to go to preschool with my mom and dad".  Too sweet.  The morning of I could tell he was anxious.  On the way over he told me his stomach was feeling nervous, but we talked about how Jesus was going to be with him all day.  He told me that Jesus would be with him and he could talk to Jesus if he felt scared and that Jesus would help his stomach feel better.  Conversations like these seriously just melt my heart.  I am so in love with this man!

 

It is really cute because every time we drop Tavian off at school Felicity asks about him the entire time he is gone.  You can't tell from the following pictures, but they truly are best buddies!  She would have LOVED to go to preschool with him.  The first day we dropped him off she sat down on a stool and started playing with everything that was out and threw a huge crying fit when I told her it was time to go! 

Getting ready to hug his sister

Lol, she wasn't having it!

They crack me up!

Our Gender Reveal!

This is obviously overdue, but I have been meaning to write about the big celebration we had to find out if Baby Rocka (as Tavian calls our little one) was a boy or a girl.

With Tavian we found out at our ultrasound that he was a boy.  It was definately a fun and exciting moment for me and Cole.  With Felicity we decided to wait until she was born.  We enjoyed getting to experience it both ways, so with this baby we decided to try something else new and find out with our friends and family.  

I thought a lot about what sort of theme I wanted for the party.  I had seen a really neat blog about a couple that found out with fireworks.  For awhile I thought that is the direction we were going to go.  But once my due date was moved to January 1st, it hit me that it would be really fun to have a mock New Years Eve Party, especially because it is likely we won't be doing anything too fun to celebrate on the actual New Years Eve.  

I had a fun time on Pinterest deciding how to decorate and I realized the perfect reveal for a New Years Eve party would be to have a large ball drop either blue or pink confetti on us.

We needed a HUGE ball to make a big impact...the trouble was that i was having a hard time finding anything.  This is the original tutorial that helped me put my plan into action (click here) and I just decided to order the largest paper lantern that I could find on the internet.  And then we got to work decorating the outside with Gold crepe paper.  All of our decorations were gold and silver, but I couldn't use silver on the ball because I couldn't find silver crape paper anywhere.  Seriously frustrating.  But it still turned out pretty sweet...don't you think??



My brother-in-law Mike was obviously pretty excited about it ;)

Our invite for the event, which I just put together on one of the evite websites, read,

"Gold or Silver

Girl or Boy

Either way, we will shout for joy!

Come join us as we celebrate finding out if Baby Emerson is a boy or girl!"

The gold and silver made a focused theme for decorations which helped me a lot with ideas.  I had gold and silver beads, party hats, and party horns for people to take, and they chose their color based on if they thought the baby was going to be a baby boy or girl.

Here is another picture of our decorations

Unfortunately we didn't do a good job of getting pictures of all the decorations, and we waited until well into the party to take this photo.  But we had gold and silver cupcakes, gold and silver candy, sparkling cider, and then I bought toasting glasses at the dollar store and labeled them with gold and silver stickers from one to ten.  I got the idea here off of pinterest

Another fun aspect of the party was having it semi-formal attire.  It was great getting dressed up with the family and it made for some pretty cute pictures too!  I am so thankful that we were able to celebrate with so many of our friends and family.  My sister Andrea was kind enough to let us have the party at her house.  She has an AMAZING back yard that was perfect for all the little kids to play in.  My other sister Ellen made the trip from Wyoming with her family to celebrate with us and she was such an absolute help with getting everything set up.  And my other sister, Sarah, was super helpful because she and her husband took care of filling the ball with confetti for us and transferring it to the party (not the easiest of tasks!!)  It made for a fun evening!!! 

Tavian and his cousin, and good buddy, Ariana.  I mean, this is just too cute, right?

I love this handsome dude!

She was so cute carrying her little baby around all night!

Ariana, Emily, and my Goddaughter Addison.  My sister Ellen has some cuties, that is for sure!

Ellen is 6 weeks further along in her pregnancy, and we are all so excited to see if they will be adding another girl or a boy to the fam!  We will all be finding out when baby Doherty gets here towards the end of November!

These were a big hit with all the kiddos...a little annoying for the adults, but it was ok ;)

Have no clue what she got on her face, but she is so cute all the same!

 And, now for the BIG reveal!

Counting down from ten getting ready to find out the exciting news!!!

Wahoo!  (Please note that my sister put pink and blue confetti in the very bottom in case any of the confetti were to leak out, so that we still wouldn't be sure and it wouldn't ruin the surprise.)

 BOY!!!!

Our whole family thought it was a boy, and it was fun that we were all right!  Tavian and I had both been convinced since day one with this baby!  I'm actually not sure how Tavian would have reacted to it being a girl, just because he was so sure he was going to have a brother!

So excited to be adding a boy to the family!

Here is a video that shows a bit more....super fun!

Video on Facebook

Here are some other fun pictures from the night 

Love my besties

So blessed to have this lady in my life, and so happy she could come and represent my CORE girls!

Sydnie and I with our adorable baby girls!

Ellen and I laughing it up as we put our hands on each others growing bellies!

love her!

Sweet Gemmy enjoying her cupcake!

Sharing with Felicity...what a nice cousin!

Looks like Felicity decided to get one of her own. 

Baby Teagan...such beautiful blue eyes!

This looks like I am helping her eat a cupcake, but really she found it on her own and went after it all on her own!  I just couldn't resist documenting it!

SISTERS!

I love this picture...our last babies have all been girls and we got a photo all together.  Felicity is the oldest followed by Gemma, Addy, and Teagan.

He was playing so hard that I am surprised I got him to stop long enough to take this picture!

My good friend Katie...love this lady.  And the little man in her arms is Cole's Godson :)

Celebrating our fun news at the end of the night

We also decided to play with the left over confetti!

This is one of my absolute faves from the night!

Overall it was such a fun night and I am so glad we had the opportunity to celebrate in this way!

1920s Wedding

 

Just trying to get stuff updated.  These are pictures from Cole's brothers wedding.  It was a 1920's themed wedding and we had a lot of fun dressing up for it.  My bestie Amy came over and helped do my hair and get me ready.  She is a lifesaver!  I think Felicity took the cake for cutest one there!! :)

 

The beautiful bride.  Everyone danced down the isle!!

She was quite the dancer!



Dancing with my handsome boy!!

HA!  We secretly drew a mustache on him.  He cried when he first saw it in the mirror so I pretended to wipe it off, but secretly left it on.  Later in the night he got a glimpse of himself so then we took it off for good.  Lol!

I could eat him up!