2014 Holiday pictures!

Here are our holiday pictures! I just love them! :)  These were put on our cards that we sent out. So some of you might be seeing them twice (or more)! :)

I love these two so much, I feel I could burst! :)

She did this on her own, didn't even have to ask! She loves him! :)

Daddy sure did pick out a good outfit, he is so handsome!

I can't believe how big she is getting!

Happy (startled, William?) little family! :) 

and for fun here is 2013's holiday picture. WOW, what a difference a year makes!

Picky eater!

As many of my readers know, Evelyn is a picky eater! Yes, I try, and try and try to get her to eat good food. For example I love making soups, I would make more of them if Mike liked more of them, but home made chicken noodle soup, that is like super nutritious, it has lots veggies in there and it is delicious. I say why would you not want to eat this?!? I actually get mad when she won't even try the things I take pride in cooking!! :(  But NO, she will not even try it! BUT what does she want?

Ramen.

Seriously, my delicious homemade chicken noodle she thinks is gross (doesn't like the little veggie pieces in there) but she gobbles this stuff like it is going out of style!! The other day she even freaked out on the package because it has pictures of chicken and veggies!! I seriously don't know what I am going to do with this kid some times! BUT alas, I give her the Ramen (cause she needs something!) and some gummy vitamins and I think, she will survive, and Mike and I will stay sane! :)

William on the other hand, he is a pretty good eater... goes to show no two kids are the same right?!?

BUT for now I want to thank you Ramen, for being my give-up-and-get-something-into-my-kids-tummy-go-to, and for being so dirt cheap if she changes her mind, I don't even have enough energy to care!! :)

Quality time with your spouse.

Well now that Michael and I have two wonderful children. Our time together is often not really us together, it is tending to the children and getting them a snack or juice or one of us is in the bathroom while our kids shower for an hour (yes we have weird children that love the water)! :) So I am very thankful for our time together and try to make it the best!

We aren't the greatest at setting time aside for the two of us. We are super fortunate that we can drive to work together and we will often get lunch together, so I know we are a ton better/ more fortunate than others, but I wanted to do something MORE once. When Mike and I were married 6 years ago, we never did a honeymoon!! :( I was in graduate school and in the middle of the qualifying exam (very stressful and key stepping stone for the rest of my graduate schooling) so it just got put off, and then we were buying a house, and getting a dog, and pregnant with Evelyn, so it just never happened!! :(

I was always insistent with Michael that I wanted very VERY badly to go on a tropical vacation with him, and wasn't apposed to others joining us, I just wanted to do that, and hey we aren't getting any younger. So it was decided we would FINALLY do it, and Mike was sick of me asking!! SO the time is almost here for me to take my tropical vacation!! :) YAY!! I am so excited I can't even describe it! At the end of January, we will be traveling to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic!! :) YAY!! So my countdown is getting lower we are at 44 days to wait!! YAY!! :) So to rub it in to those not joining us, here is where I am dreaming about!!!! :)

Look at that beautiful beach!! Can't wait to dig my toes in that sand!

you can bet I will spend almost 100% of the time in that pool next to that bar!! :)

WOW! it has been a while!

So sorry it has been a long time! I can make lots of excuses, we have heard them all. BUT the truth is I have not made this a priority. I do enjoy it, and I will try to start it back up.

My other excuse is William. He has been a bit of a challenging child. We love him dearly but he keeps us on our toes. It was really rough the first 6 months of his life with the ear infections and sleeping issues. He is finally back on track now (he is 1!) so hopefully I can feel more in control of this life now! :)

I have a picture to capture our life of late, in all it's crazy glory:

Baby its cold outside! :)

I hope I just made you sing the tune in your head, that is what I was going for! :) I do like that Christmas/winter song a lot, however if you listen to the words, the guy is quite the pushy gentlemen... poor girl is just trying to go home, there were many things she was concerned about if she stayed with the guy, what people would say.... but I digress, the song is not the point of this post! :)

The past few days here in Wisconsin have been terribly cold... and not the casual 'oh it is pretty cold out there' elevator conversation, more like it is so cold you should not go outside! Yikes! All this talk about this polar vortex that was displaced... this is crazy weather scientist talk, which I know nothing about! :) So I just wanted to share that yes it was super terrible cold out, but unfortunately I still needed to get to work so I sadly have to take my cute little baby out in the scary cold! I bundled him good and we went from warm house to warm car and back in seconds, so we were very safe! :)  Here are some pictures of him. Note: I have a cute knit hat that I put him in all the time when we leave the house, but knit hats are full of holes and I didn't want that bitter cold air to get him, so what do I do? double up hats one that Gaga got him (super cute but too big yet) with the knit hat inside! Wa-la a super duper hat, that is super duper cute too! :) He even smiled a lot when I put it on, but he pretty much smiles all the time! :) love this little guy!

flash was off so you couldn't really see the cute hats, but I love this one with his big beautiful brown eyes, he was smiling seconds before this pic... there is a little smile left there!

He is like AAHH momma, no bright flash!

Squinting cause not flash it too dark and flash is too bright... what can a person do?!? :) He is so cute, and he had a warm head for sure! :)

My Birthday Thankfulness!

Well today is my birthday, YAY! :) I find birthdays weird... some people make a really big deal of them, and some don't. I guess I usually fall on the side of not making a big deal of them. I am feeling different lately, not that I need to have a big party all the time or anything, but I am happy to be here on this earth another year (I am young not in real danger of death, but bad things do happen...)! None the less, I am very happy, thankful, and pleased with my 29 years! I can honestly say I would not change a thing!

Lately I have been feeling so blessed and thankful, it is probably due to the addition of William to our family. Believe me when I say that the ease in which I conceived, carried, and delivered, as well as his first few weeks are not lived and remembered without great thankfulness and feelings of being blessed and fortunate. I am very aware of the many various struggles that many couples face in all stages of becoming parents, and I am so very thankful for my two wonderful, beautiful, healthy children! I am in awe of the wonders that my life has become, and I enjoy marveling in it, and taking it all in.

Sometimes when it is a famous person's birthday, people ask what you have done in your life in comparison. For example it was just LeBron James's 29th birthday (yeah he is 8 days older than me!), people were saying 'LeBron is 29 today, what have you done with your life?' Well I feel people should not sell themselves short, and I definitely do not! I am very very proud of all I have accomplished in my 29 years! Happily married (most days! :) ), two beautiful children, wonderful supportive loving extended family, a home, food on the table, warmth in my home, clean water to drink, I earned my PhD, and I have a career that I enjoy... I am blessed in so many ways, and I recognize that I might not be famous with amazing athletic talent, but I worked for what I have and I am actively making my wonderful life what is important to me.

Some might say I am 'lucky' and I don't like that, the only thing that is truly lucky for me is being born to my wonderful parents, that was truly lucky and I had no impact in that decision. The rest of my life if referred to as lucky, bothers me. I prefer to think of the 'luck' in my life like my brother says, 'luck is when opportunity meets preparation'. So for this last year of my 20s I want to finish this wonderful decade off with a bang, and continue to go out and get the things I want in life. I will make this year great, and I know it will prove to be another wonderful year in the life of Kala! :) Then we will have to wait and see what the 30s bring, I have so much life left (I hope it is healthy and long) it is an exciting future to imagine! :)

Newborn preview photos.

We had our photos taken by McManigal Photography! They are so wonderful! We have Amy do our photos, and we love them, we started to go by Amy when Evelyn was born so we wanted to continue with William, and we are not disappointed! :) they turned out pretty darn good and these are just the sneak peeks! Stay tuned for more in the future!

I will be getting a canvas of this one to go with our other family photos! :) 

Happy New Year!

Well 2013 is now history, and what a history it is for me!  Some people really make a big deal of leaving the old year and starting fresh a new year, I kind of do that on a daily if not situation by situation basis. Rarely do I find things end perfectly on the end of the year... so it is hard (my overly logical way of thinking!) for me to go with the whole new year resolution or going head strong into new things! Every minute of everyday is new to me, so I am always thinking and hoping for the best, today in the new year and tomorrow and in the middle of June, it is no matter to me! I am an eternal optimist, I even make quite a few people mad with my extreme optimism! :) Oh well, my positive attitude makes me smile and happy and that is what matters most in life, happiness!  So reflecting back on 2013, it was a great year for me, in spite of loosing my dear grandmother (I love her and miss her dearly), things were good. I successfully defended my dissertation and earned my PhD (that is a big deal!) and I also successfully brought a new life into the world! YAY! I would say that is a good year! I can't complain life is good, and 2014 will be great because I will make it great!

To all of you, I wish you the happiest of new years! I truly wish you all the best, but in reality you should go out and make it the best, because we make many of our own outcomes in life what they are, so make them great and your 2014 will be great too! :)  HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Happy little family of four! :)

Well we have officially been a family of four for 8 whole weeks! Hooray! :) I am also please to report that is has gone surprisingly well for us! Sorry I have not posted much, life with a newborn and 2 (well 3 as of yesterday) year old is pretty busy!

On Tuesday, November 5th at 8:01 am, our BBS who is now named William Thomas, was born into this world! he was a good healthy 8 lbs 9 oz. and 21 inches long. Good sized boy! My surgery went very well, I had a little pain when they were 'putting me back together' (yes like humpty dumpty!) but nothing a little shot of morphine wouldn't fix! :)

I am back to work today, yes, December 31st, how silly, but alas it is life and what I must do. Today I did not cry... I almost did, like 3 times. It is a weird thing, cause I don't think I would be a very good stay at home mom, and I actually like what I do (I know I am a weirdo), but it is still really hard to leave my little ones! William was giving me big smiles this morning in spite of his stuffy nose, and it melted my heart! I know he knows who mamma is, but it is still hard to leave him when he is so small.

The past 8 weeks have been very good, yes, Mike will tell you there were a few times when I got frustrated or had a bad hour or two, but I think I did pretty well overall! :) William is a good baby and will even sleep 5-7 hours for me at night! :) I hope this continues so that I can function at work! :)

Evelyn has been the best big sister, she loves her little brother with all her heart, it is so cute! She wants to help change his diapers, this consists of her putting cream on his butt, imagine her little pointer finger with like a pea-size amount of cream every so daintily putting cream on a baby's bottom! So cute! :) She showers him with kisses, even when I ask her to leave him be, cause he is sleeping. She is always wondering where he is and will be the first to say 'baby brother is crying' as if no one else can hear him! She wants to hold him a lot, but only for a few minutes. She is also really good at coming up with a plan for mommy to play with her, like, 'you can put baby brother in his bouncer and play with me' of course this is usually when I am nursing him or something! :) Whenever we leave the house she asks if baby brother is coming, and heavens forbid if I put her in the car first and go back into the house to get William's carrier, she is right away saying don't forget baby brother! :) She really has been a delight to watch grow as a big sister, if you ask her about herself, she says she is a good girl, she is a nastics (as in gymnastics) girl, and she is a big sister, she does a good job of summing up her amazing little life!

William has been a good eater, and seems to be growing leaps and bounds, I don't know his current weight for sure but I would think he has to be around 11lbs! :) he was 9lbs 11oz a his 1 month check up. He has been sleeping good and night, and if he is fussy it is usually cause he is fighting sleep but a little swaddling and bouncing with the magic 'butt pat' and he is out! :) So all in all he is a really great baby! I just love him so much already.

This week we started to get a few stuffy noses in the house! :( it is so sad when a baby has a stuffy nose, there is not a lot you can do but make them mad when you try to suck those buggers out! Thankfully Evelyn is a really good nose blower so that is a lot of help!

They are really great together! Love these two! :) So adorable!

BBS update!

Well we have officially made it to November!  BBS, just like his sister, is all to comfortable in the womb... darn, I must make way too nice of a home! :) My cousin who was due a few days ahead of me, had her baby boy on the 29th. Yay! it was a surprise, so we are happy that BBS has a little boy buddy on the Rettler side of the family!

Last night at my doctor appointment the doctor could hear BBS's heartbeat up on the top half of my tummy, so just from that we know he is still pretty high up there! But this is all ok, cause he is coming out on Tuesday for sure, and really I have been feeling pretty good the last week or so, so I shouldn't complain! So we are just a mere 4 days away from meeting BBS and giving him a name! :) I have been reading a lot of advice blogs about bringing home a second child, and the changes, challenges, and what to expect type things... I am prepared for the worst, and hoping for the best! All that advice reading could drive you crazy too, I don't know how people follow a lot of the advice out there, there are so many conflicting opinions! That is why I seem to always default to the instincts... my love for these babies of mine will guide my way! :)

I have been informed (lovingly?!?) from my sister and husband, that I don't think like a normal person, I think like a scientist in all things... (I guess I am just crazy) Anyway, I have determined that through my scientific training and maybe I was like this through life, but I like to be able to predict the outcome of an experiment... and really life is a big experiment isn't it? So this experiment that has been cooking for the last 39 weeks, is about to yield it's results. Other than the fact that there will be a small human joining the forces of the world, I don't know how to predict the outcome of the up coming changes... and this realization is difficult for me. Sure, sure, we know baby will eat, sleep, poo, pee, all that good stuff, but the real experiment is how will Evelyn handle this?!? How will mommy and daddy do with 2? How will mommy survive with little sleep again (yes, I like my sleep, I am a nicer person with it!)? Will the confidence of having survived the 1st really help with the 2nd? Will this experiment result in no additional similar experiments (aka, will there be more future baby Schilters?)? These are all outcomes of this life experiment that I would like to have answers to, or at least logical predictions... but I just can't do it. I am facing the music, and heading into this great unknown! :) I am hopeful, and I know I have people I can ask for help, so overall I know we will turn out ok (alive, really that is the main goal). Clearly I am very excited and anxious for what the next few days, weeks and months of our lives will bring, it is uncharted territory for us, and it will sure be one heck of an experiment! Stay tuned for results!! :)

Lots of love to you all, and think of us Tuesday morning, probably around the 7:30-8ish time frame... that is when Surgery will be.  I might try to throw in a couple more blogs before that but in case not, wish us luck! :)