Playing with my friends!

Last night McKenzie and I met up with Carrie, Halle, Gina and Atticus at the mall for some ice cream and fun! Both Halle and Atticus are too small to play with yet but McKenzie does love looking at them and waving. This time next year those three will be running faster than we can keep up with them.

Here's Carrie and Gina with the babies : ) Halle was born at the end of February and Atticus arrived in mid May. Carrie is sporting her sunglasses indoors because of a pair of nice black eyes - her family went to the Great Wolf Lodge, a new casino / water park hotel down near Olympia and she went on a river raft ride and took a knee to the head and still had good things to say about the place!


While these girls and their babies relaxed on the sidelines, I chased McKenzie all over the playland - she loves that place! She is such a dare devil and wants to climb to the highest point of every toy while I'm frantically trying to reach her to keep her from falling. It's a good thing our new camera has a super fast start up time so I can actually take pictures of McKenzie before she's off in another direction.




We leave tomorrow morning bright and early for my works award trip to Banff in the Canadian Rockies - it should be beautiful and hopefully I'll have some great pics to share when we return later this week. McKenzie doesn't have a passport yet so she's staying home with her Aunt Kacey for this trip. We will miss her. We're off to cousin Kayla's 3rd birthday party today so hopefully I'll get a chance to upload some pictures from that later today if not I'll update when we are back from Banff.

Baby Genius!

McKenzie had a blockbuster day yesterday - three behavior breakthroughs were noted! When we were getting ready yesterday morning I changed McKenzie into her clothes for the day and changed her diaper then I was putting her pj's in the laundry room and turned around and she wasn't in the landing anymore. So first I checked our bedroom but she wasn't there looking for her 'daw-gas' then I looked in her room and she was putting her own diaper into her Diaper Champ! I couldn't have been happier! Someone who wants to help me do things - I'm loving this! She might have been ready to do this for a while since she does always try to grab her diaper after I change her but I always keep it away from her since I thought she just wanted to play with it or worse hide it somewhere : )

A quick note about the Diaper Champ - it truly is a Champ and while it is stinky at times we love it. It's one of those rare items that just works.

Here's McKenzie on action this morning, after I changed her I let her get the diaper off the floor and then I told her to go throw it away. She did get a little wild at first and headed to the bathroom to show Matt but then thought about it and turned around and headed for her room and put it into the Diaper Champ!


The next breakthrough was around the dog food - McKenzie loves to put things into the water dish and loves to take the food and try to eat it. We end up putting the bowls on the counter when she's loose downstairs. Yesterday we went down in the morning and I was putting the bowls up but there was some loose food on the floor thanks to Indy our messy eater. McKenzie picked up a piece of food but instead of putting it into her mouth she put it back in the bowl!

Then at Aunt Kacey's house McKenzie was able to play in the sandbox by herself yesterday and not eat any sand! She really is growing up and learning more and more each day! Who knows maybe tomorrow she'll be starting her own blog!

To The Dump, To The Dump, To The Dump Dump Dump...

Yes, perhaps this is an all time low for a blog topic but hey this is our real life so you get even the trashy stuff : ) We had several large items to get rid of the main thing being our old fireplace insert that we removed to put in the gas fireplace. We are so glad to have that out of the yard. So this weekend we took McKenzie on her first trip to the dump, again you are probably asking why bother talking about it. Growing up in Monroe Matt and I both have memories of going to dump with our parents. I won't claim these are priceless childhood memories we recall fondly but we have them all the same.

McKenzie's memories of the dump probably won't be anything like the ones we have of standing on the edge of platform watching all the household garbage join in with everyone else in towns. The dump of our times was an adventurous place where kids helped to throw the garbage in and once my Mom let a strange man drive our car because she had the trailer on it and couldn't get it to back right. The dump or 'solid waste facility' as they are called now is a much different place. They are very efficient and organized and children under 12 must remain in their vehicles. You also have to go to the recycle station first to sort your recyclables then head over to be weighed on your way in and weighted on your way out to see how much your load will cost. Dumps are no longer outdoors - you now are in a large building with a row of loading slots on a raised platform. You throw your items over the rail onto a cement floor and then a giant tractor comes along and sorts out large things that could have been recycled and then crams the rest through a slot at the end of the building into a cargo container. It's all very organized and efficient. When we were kids if you accidentally threw something in that you wanted to keep your Dad could always just jump down into the bin and fish it out for you. Not today if it goes over the rail it's gone.

McKenzie did pretty good at the dump but we could definitely tell she didn't like the smell. I was going to try to take a picture in action but I just couldn't bring myself to get out the camera at the actual dump so here is one of Matt and McKenzie in route to the dump. At the dumps of old I would have gotten that camera out and I would have take a picture of Matt holding McKenzie with our garbage in the background...

Too Cute...

McKenzie has officially qualified for the 'Too Cute' club. This all started years ago when my Aunt Renee and I were walking in the U District and this man walking behind us started yelling at us telling us to quit following him. We were confused since we were clearly walking in front of him and so he must be following us. This went on for several blocks until we finally stopped in a crosswalk and Aunt Renee motioned for him to pass us. He did not like this but after few seconds of consideration he did come to the conclusion that the only way to stop us from following him was to pass us and walk in front. As he passed us he stopped to tell us one more thing. He said "You know what your problem is? You're just too cute." And since that day we have realized that being 'too cute' isn't a problem for us just for that guy.

Here's a picture of McKenzie and Aunt Renee back in April when we took a train ride on the Amtrak from Edmonds to Everett for dinner. It was a birthday adventure for Nathan's fifth birthday since he loves trains.



Here's McKenzie looking 'too cute' this morning before she went off to Kacey's for the day. Notice the huge binky she is holding - that is a dog toy that the dogs have never liked but McKenzie finds it quite funny and loves to carry it around.

Happy Father's Day 'Dada'...

There is nothing better than a weekend spent at home especially after being gone for part of the week. We had a great time enjoying the sunshine which finally decided to show up around here. Saturday we went out to breakfast and watched McKenzie eat an entire bowl of fruit - she loves fruit more than anything! Then we came home and worked in the yard - or really Matt worked in the yard and McKenzie 'helped'. Here's McKenzie helping her Dada mow the lawn with her new bubble mower that Auntie Anne gave her for her birthday. She was focused on only mowing on the patio - she did not want her mower going in the grass : )


Today for Father's Day we hung around the house this morning then we got dressed and went out to lunch at our favorite local breakfast place The Maltby Cafe with Matt's entire family. We always enjoy the food there and love how close it is to home. For Father's Day McKenzie got her Dada a new push broom because his broke last weekend. He was inventing ways to fix it rather than just getting a new one. She also made him a hand printed plaque at a local ceramic place. Here's a picture of the plaque it's hanging in the laundry room where I'm sure Matt will see it all the time ; )

Here's a couple of pictures of us at lunch today... McKenzie and her Dada

Me with my movie star baby hiding from the paparazzi in her sunglasses and hat

Happy 1st Birthday McKenzie!!!

Sorry to all my blog stalkers - I've been in Vegas this week and didn't have time to update my blog with all our recent exciting events.

The most exciting event was McKenzie turning one this past Monday. We celebrated on Saturday with a party at the house with family and friends. McKenzie was a great birthday girl despite skipping her afternoon nap - I guess that cake frosting made up for the lack of sleep. We had a dog themed party complete with pup cakes. I had called a whole bunch of bakeries to see if anyone could make me a cake with a dog on it. There was nothing to be had so I turned to my good friend Google and was quickly hooked up with some dog cake ideas. Here's the cakes that I made.

McKenzie got to have one of the pup cakes all to herself : )

After dinner and cake McKenzie opened her presents and got lots of great stuff! It was so nice to have her cousins Nathan and Kayla to help open and test all the presents. Here she is with a couple of her gifts. Thanks to everyone who came - it was a lot of fun.

Who knew there were two seats on this inch worm?

McKenzie's has been tearing up the neighborhood on her new ride

But I Want A Pony....

And this girl got one from her Aunt Kacey! Okay, not a real pony but a pretty cute ponytail. This is McKenzie's first real hairdo. I've tried to put clips in before but they never last long and she doesn't really have that much hair.


One thing I wasn't really looking forward to with a girl was doing her hair but I loved seeing her with the ponytail - so grown up and cute. I went out today and bought some more little rubber bands to try some fun things with her hair. I don't think she has enough hair yet for pig tails but soon!

When McKenzie was a tiny baby she had this crazy flyaway hair on the top of her head that I just loved. Here's a picture from when she's about a month and a half old showing off the hair. Her hair also looks redish in her early pictures but it's definitely blonde now!

Splish Splash She Was Takin' A Bath...

Last weekend when we were out at Pacific Beach we went into one of the little shops downtown and they had the cutest sign for a kids bathroom. I've been wanting to do something with our extra bathroom since we moved into our house four years ago but since we rarely use that bathroom it wasn't high on our list of things to do. That has changed since McKenzie started taking her baths in that bathtub - now it's a regular part of our days.

Here's McKenzie enjoying some fun in the tub : )


Here's the sign that I bought - it has inspired me to get moving on that bathroom and make it into a room I actually like. I think I'll try to match some of the colors in the sign for different aspects of the room and make it a fun place for taking baths!