Happy First Birthday Evan!

Today our baby boy turned one.  To celebrate we spent the afternoon at Sever's corn maze in Shakopee, MN.  We all enjoyed the day! 

It has been amazing to watch Evan grow and change and we are excited to see what the next year brings.  Happy First Birthday Baby Boy!

Ready for the day's adventures

hanging out with Aunt Jackie

Madelyn was showing Evan how to work the tractor

MMMM....cake!

Madelyn Updates

This fall has brought a lot of changes for Madelyn's schedule.  She started preschool the first week of September and the next week she started Cubbies.

First day of Preschool!

So far, Madelyn has really been enjoying preschool.  She goes Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons.  It is only two blocks from our house and so far the weather has been pretty nice, so she is usually riding her scooter to and from school.  She loves art, playing on the playground, and the interactions with other kids.  She isn't always descriptive of what she did at school, but she looks forward to it and is always really excited about school when we talk to her.

Scooter :)

Madelyn has been a little less excited about Cubbies, but I think there are a couple of reasons for that.  Since she has preschool in the afternoon, it makes for a long day on Wednesdays, and it is also pretty late in the day for her - evening is still her cranky time of day.  Also, the 4 year olds have already earned their vests and there is some jealousy among the 3 year olds who don't have theirs yet :)  Hopefully when she gets her vest she will be a little more excited. She likes the stories and does pretty well with the memory verses.

Family photo shoot in July - it is clear who the star is ;)

All in all, that is a lot more structure this fall for Madelyn than she has ever had before.  I think as she gets used to it she will like her new schedule, but so far it has only been a couple of weeks and we are still in the adjustment period.

Paul Bunyan Land - from our family vacation

Madelyn really enjoyed the rides - no lines made a big difference :)

 Madelyn loves to be outside, art, packing things into any container she can find, and playing with her brother.  She loves to tell him what he should be doing; that is working ok for now - we'll see how that goes as Evan gets older.  Oh, the adventures that are yet to come!

Evan Updates

The summer has come and gone and Evan has gotten so much bigger!  He will be one on Saturday and it seems like time has just flown by.

In July we did a family photo shoot with the Vogel side of the family.  This picture captures Evan pretty well!

Evan is now crawling and cruising around the house.  It is getting difficult to keep track of him since he is moving with some impressive speed.  He is also working on climbing which was not on my list of skills I was hoping for him to accomplish early.  However, he is pleased with his mobility and his ability to make progress in going directions that he is interested in going.  This video is from shortly after Evan started crawling - he is quite a bit more speedy now :)

We got his first haircut about a month ago since his hair was getting ridiculously long, but it was still hard to see him go from the baby look to a more "little boy" look.  However, now Madelyn no longer suggests we help keep Evan's hair out of his eyes with barrettes or ponytails.

What is going on here?

Look at how long his hair was!

You know, this is kind of fun :)

Big Boy Haircut!

Evan also spends most of his awake time babbling and saying the few words that he can.  His repertoire includes "mama," "dada," "poppop,"something along the lines of "papa" for Grandpa, and "es" for yes, and his current favorite words of "uh-oh" which frequently follows the throwing of his pacifier and is accompanied by a huge grin, and "all done" or "ah-dah."  We are pretty sure that he has determined that he is not going to let his sister speak for him, so he is working on his vocabulary.

He really loves his sister and likes to play with her.  He also now follows her around the house if she leaves the room that they are playing in together.  Most of the time they play pretty well together, but Evan has definitely not mastered the art of sharing and Madelyn still has some room for improvement in that area as well.

pre-haircut :)

hard to read the 11 month old sign - Evan wanted to hold it

We took a couple of trips in August.  First Evan flew to Michigan with me and my sister to go to my cousin Sarah's wedding, and then right after that we went up to Breezy Point, MN with Mommom and Grandpa and Grandma for a week of family vacation time.  We spent some time at the resort and also went to Paul Bunyan Land as well as Itasca State Park.

At Breezy Point Resort

Hanging out with Aunt Becci at the Flint, MI airport

Hiking to the fire tower

Headwaters of the Mississippi

Overall it was a pretty busy summer (which is somewhat responsible for my lack of blogging) and Evan is changing from a baby to a toddler before our eyes!