Play Dates?!?

So Evelyn is really fun and loves, I mean LOVES, other kids. Therefore she needs some play buddies! So call me (mommy Kala) up for a play date.... you can be big or small, she loves everyone! :)



She says "this new-to-me table would fit a few friends at it, nicely!" :)



Flower Girl

So Evelyn loves being outside, for everything, but lately she has really enjoyed the flowers... or more like destroyed the flowers! :)  It is cute, she even trys to water (I think, don't know what is going on in her head) other flowers with the flowers she picks.



Look at the flowers! she can't reach them from there....



Here is one closer, I can pull it and smell it and use it to water the other plants with a "wsshh" sound! :)



She sniffed this dramatically and followed it with a fake "ha-choo" HAHAHA!

Testing a funny video

So Mike and I love to take videos of Evelyn cause sometimes a still picture is not enough. I just realized there is an option to post a video. This particular video was from a few weeks ago, it is so funny, see what she is wearing, well I got out a bunch of her summer clothes and she lately wants to dress herself or insist on puting certain things on. Here she has a very summery dress (it was hot that day) she then got a random jacket to put on. Finally she insisted on having me put her big winter boots on. Mike and I were laughing so hard, she then proceeded to jump around on her bouncy zebra. The fun is never ending with this girl! :)

Looks like a SUCCESS!! Look forward to more videos in the future! :)

Happy Friday!!! :)

I hope your Friday and your Memorial Day weekend are wonderful! We are going up north to our cabin again, and as requested I am going to try and get good descriptive pictures of the cabin so people can see it... stay tuned for that next week! :)


Such a goof ball thinking of doing this!

Now it is a good idea to walk around with a bucket on her head!

She loves to be upside-down and get thrown around! Crazy Baby, I am telling you! :)



Gardening

Two weekends ago, Mike and I thought it was high time we tackle our yard a little. I took the front and weeded like a mad woman! I am so proud of my job, I kept thinking of how proud my mother (who always wanted me to help her weed, and I grummbled about it) will be of my gardening. I also transfered plants and planted a few new ones, as well as trimed a few bushes! Mike took on the greuling task of tearing down the garden fence in the backyard. When we bought our house it came with a fenced in garden area. At first I was super excited about this, I love fresh garden veggies! Well the first year we planted in there (after having to try and tackle the rampent weeds from neglect in previous years) we had it all, and I was proud.... well that turned out to be a really big dissapointing bust, want to know why? DEER! Those bloody buggers run wild and everywhere around our neighborhood (in the city even) and they jumped our fence! They ate all my tomatos, green beans, peas, kohlrabi (love love love these) and other things. Needless to say I was heart broken and ticked! So that was when I was pregnant with Evelyn and the last year we were just too busy with a new baby, and this garden was too big, it would have been a full time job just to weed and care for the thing! So the fence started going bad and the weeds were crazy so we decided it was stupid to have this garden we can't do anything with! SO we (mostly Mike) ripped it all down! :) See pictures below. We are now going to plant some grass there and I think we might invest in one of those pop up type pools. We are still working on getting our grass nice and weed free, but that is a lot of work too! Here are some pictures of Evelyn helping me garden in the front! and before and after of Mike's big tear-down.




This is one of those iron planter-pot holder things, well it is a bike so Evelyn thought she could ride it! hahaha!



This is a bit blurry but shows her funny little attempt at riding the planter holder!



Backyard with the big fenced in garden area, not the best picture to show the garden, but you can kind-of see the giant size of the thing.



Backyard with fence ripped down. Doesn't the yard look so much bigger?

 

I am so proud of my gardening work! Couldn't have done it without my wonderful MIL's help! :)



Still have to plant in the planter but Evelyn isn't trying to ride in it anymore! :)



 

Update on the Shiner

The post that I put on Monday of Crazy Baby Evelyn, well those pictures were from Sunday the day that the incident occurred, there has been a little time for it to develop! :) Daddy likes to say "you should see the other guy!" hahaha! Here are some new pictures from last night.



Notice her climbing on the toy shopping cart she has.... people better not wonder where she gets her bruises... pictures speak a thousand words! :)



Backyard Fun

Now that the weather is improving and getting nicer we have been able to play in the backyard more! :) Evelyn loves being outside, for just about everything and anything. Grandma Chris got a bunch of fun gently used outdoor toys and Evelyn can now play with them! It is fun, but we are still learning how to climb the slide and go down it the best way, but it is lots of fun! :) Here are a few pictures I got about a week ago.

 

Crazy Baby

So I have mentioned before that Evelyn is a little bit crazy. She is too outgoing, or adventurous, or dangerous. However you want to say it, she is go go go, and non-stop and just well crazy is what I describe it as. At Dana and Jeff's wedding quite a few people got to see her craziness. Well Saturday evening my sister took Evelyn to her house for a sleepover, and this is no easy task. Sunday morning I called my sister to see how she was and how we were going to get Evelyn back, and it is always a bad sign when your sister says: "Kala, you love me right" as a mom what do you think is the first thing that goes through my head? I am thinking she broke something, got stitches, something terrible, cause I know my daughter is crazy! Well to a bit of my relief she only got a black and blue eye! Yeah our daredevil climber baby decided to climb the wash basket and proceeded to fall into the hope chest my sister has! My poor sister only went to the bathroom! Well here are some pictures (that happen to be funny) of our crazy baby and her new shiner! Oh and no we don't beat her! And she decided on her silly outfit herself! :)



Silly crazy baby who put her winter hat out and smiled with her shiner!

 

She added the hat to her diaper time, it was hot Sunday and we were getting ready for a bath and she found her hat and put it on... we were laughing at her quite a bit! :)

10 apologies

Well, here it is again, I have to apologize for being absent 10 whole days! I am sorry. We learned something new this last week or so.... that it is time consuming/planning challenging for both Mike and I to stand up in a wedding and plan out all of Evelyn's whereabouts during that time! :) Also it took a lot of work for me to get 'prettied' up for the special occasion, yeah I got my hair cut and colored (been ~6 months since I have done that) then I went tanning a bit (yeah-yeah, they were bright yellow dresses and my skinned looked like dead white-spotty paper), and then my wonderful MIL spoiled me (which she does a lot, I know, I have the best MIL, be jealous) with a manicure and pedicure!! And if you were at the wedding you know this cause I told everyone, but had awesome Niki Minaj teal nail polish which looked great! :) So all the beautifying myself occupied my time for blogging, but the wedding was this last Saturday, and it was FABULOUS! I am still recovering, I like to celebrate a bit too much, I just have so much happiness to share! :) hahaha! Oh and I was busy and stuff so I really did not take a single picture.. yeah I suck! So I would say I would blog about the wedding, but I don't have any pictures to share... maybe I will steal some from other people on facebook?!? Sorry! But stay tuned for posts I plan to work on some tonight while watching Donald Driver (and voting for him) on Dancing with the Stars! GO PACK GO!

Happy Friday!

Wanted to start off your Friday with another set of funny Evelyn mug shots! :) hahaha! Have a great Friday!



coming in for a kiss!

goofy 'cheese' face!

shocked 'this balloon won't float' face! :)

Favorite things!

If you didn't know, I am a huge, I mean huge, popcorn fan! Seriously I could eat popcorn for meals. Actually my whole entire family loves popcorn, it is pretty great. My brother and sister in law always make a roasting pan full of popcorn for themselves and the kids when they are watching movies. My sister and my neice eat popcorn for dinner sometimes (when my neice won't eat anything else). AND my dad even has a big bowl that my sister in law made that says grandpa on it and then there are little bowls for each of his grandkids with their names on, isn't that the cutest? So with my 'genetic' love for popcorn it should come as no surprise that I eat it often too! :) There are all sorts of popcorn out there (personally microwave bags don't count for me cause they are icky!), flavors for the popcorn (I just like butter and salt) and I know people really like movie theater, but I think it is 'eehh'. The best hands down popcorn is on the stovetop with a little butter and salt!! I have a few of the turn-handle type stovetop poppers, and I love them! Now with the kernals there are all kinds of those too! The gourmet ones are pretty good... not amazing, the funny thing is, the best corn (and super cheap) is the fleet and farm brand, mmmm! However my mother in law knows I love popcorn and she spoils me and gets me 'Ladyfinger popcorn' which is made by the Valley Popcorn Company out of Neenah, Wi. IT IS AWESOME! This popcorn is virtully hulless and light and tastey! mmm, I want to go make some as I write this! So last time I made some I took some pictures to share with you one of my favorite things! Enjoy, and come on over for my delicious popcorn, Mike, Indy, and Evelyn love it too! :)



MMMM! I want to eat some just looking at it!! :)



Daddy's girl

Well when we were pregnant, and even before, Mike always said he wanted a little girl.... he wanted a daddy's little girl. Well he got one! I think I am pretty low on the list of people that Evelyn likes and wants to be with, first is Daddy, then her grandparents, and then me. I know I should not take it to heart, but I don't know what I did to be the lowest on the list! :) Anyway, Evelyn is a lot like both Mike and myself, but she is A LOT like Mike when it comes to pasta. This kid loves noodles! :) Here she is eating some penne pasta, mmm!


Taking a picture of the messy girl. say"CHE....

.....EESE!!!" That is better! :)

All clean after! :)



Trivia - Milwuakee Brewers

Hopefully you enjoy a little Brewers trivia (answers to follow next week).

1.) This current Brewer has won the National League (NL) Rookie of the Year award, the NL MVP award, has been an All-Star for 4 straight years and has won the NL Silver Slugger Award 4 straight years. Name this Brewer. Answer - Ryan Braun

2.) How many times and what year(s) have the Brewers been to the World Series? Answer - One (1982)

3.) This Brewers player is fourth all time in consecutive save opportunities converted. Name the Brewer and how long the streak was/is? Answer - John Axford (48)

4.) In the 2011 season, Ryan Braun became only the second Brewer to do what for a season? (Bonus questions: Name the other Brewer.) Answer - Hit 30 homeruns and steal 30 bases in the same season (Tommy Harper)

5.) In 2007, this former Brewers became the youngest player in major league baseball history to hit 50 home-runs in a season. Answer - Prince Fielder

6.) During that same 2007 season the Brewers tied a team record with 4 All-Stars being named to the NL team. Name those 4 Brewers. Answer - Francisco Cordero, Prince Fielder, J.J. Hardy and Ben Sheets

7.) What year did the Brewers set the team record for wins in a season? What was the win total? Answer - 2011 (96)

8.) How many MVP awards have been won by Brewer players? Name the MVPs. Answer - 4 (Rollie Fingers, 2 by Robin Yount and Ryan Braun)

Do you love Guacamole?

Do you love Guacamole? Cause Evelyn does... is that weird that a 1 year old loves guac? Here she is gobbling it up! :)

Our favorite home away from home...

On my dad's side of the family, in 1988 (I was only 3) they (grandpa, uncles and aunts) bought an old cabin for a hunting lodge. Well 24 years later it is anything but an old hunting lodge. Through multiple renovations, and pretty much every weekend when the weather is nice, there is a project to make this cabin an even more awesome place. It is difficult to adequately explain what this place means to me and to my family members, but it truly is our favorite home away from home! :)

Two weekends ago, Mike went to visit some of his college buddies and I decided to be brave and take Evelyn and Indy up north for the weekend. Well my mom, dad, sister, brother, his girlfriend and aunt and uncle and cousin and kids were up there too... so not like I was really roughing it on my own. Normally I am fortunate to have Mike with me and we function as a complete family, utilizing a lot of tag-teaming for our crazy child. This weekend however, was the first (I think) for either of us to be a full weekend solo parent. I like to think I passed with flying colors... you can ask my mom or sister if you want the complete truth! :)

Below are some picture of the cabin, or what we (my family members) like to call "The Avenue of the Giants". This name was chosen for two reasons, the big tall pines surrounding the place, and because of the fact it originated as a hunting lodge and we have deer mounts in the cabin so they are the 'giant' bucks! :) These pictures show how amazing the cabin is today, about 3 years ago we found out that a back room of the cabin's roof was pretty much rotten and was going to fall in on us, well we needed to repair this, and pretty much just made a big addition (maybe one day I can dig up before and after pics)! :) Also the cabin is a short walk from our lake, Lone Stone, which you can imagine is a place we love to spend lots of time. Here are pictures of the fun short weekend up north.



Here is the Avenue of the Giants: left pic is east facing side, middle is south west facing, and right is the west facing side. Isn't it pretty! :)

 

Lone Stone Lake: left pic is Indy enjoying the wather, middle is the shore without the piers in, and right is everyone hanging out & throwing stones in the water.



Evelyn and Milli being the best of buddies again, they are fun together!



Evelyn looking like a boy in some of her warm 'outdoor' clothes, she thought she was a big shot with all the room to roam.