We're Baaaack!

After 10 days in Pearl City, Aidan and I have returned to MN. The drive back went just as well as the drive down. No screaming fits even though Aidan only slept about 50 minutes during the 6 hour car ride. We returned home to a big surprise...Kyle remodeled the downstairs bathroom while we were gone! He laid new tile, painted the walls and trim, and installed a new pedestal sink. Whoa! Who is this man and what did he do with my husband?!? ; ) I love it and can't wait for Kyle to start on the landings and upstairs bathroom. (I'm not making him by the way, he wants to)

Since we were gone so long, I'll just post some of my favorite pics from our visit to Nana and Papa's house. (Grandpa Albers became "Papa" while we were visiting) : )

Papa gives Aidan a ride

Kick, Kick, Kick

Aidan loved this snake
(used to keep the blackbirds away from the pool)

Eli (23 months)
Aidan (15months)

Swimming with Eli and Nikki

Eli, Nikki, Aidan, and Courtney

Snuggling with Aunt Kali

New Best Friends, Aunt Kali and Uncle Kyle

Concentrating on the road

How many kids fit in a Cozy Coupe?

Kali and Kyle at their couple's shower

This Little Piggy

Aidan made a visit to the farm today to see some baby piggies. We picked up my Aunt Marty then headed over to my cousin Mark's house. Aidan wasn't too keen on touching the piglets, but he didn't mind being in the pen as long as the pigs didn't come anywhere near him. : ) I got in the pen to show him they were nice little piggies. Of course, he couldn't stay still and scared all of the little pigs away. When we were getting ready to leave a load of new piglets showed up and we got to watch as they were unloaded from the trailer and herded down to their pen. Fun stuff. While we were at the farm we also got to see horses, a dog, and a baby kitty. A good education for my little city baby.

Legendary

I realize it has been a whole week since I posted, but it has been one CRAZY week. Last Thursday, Aidan and I made the drive down to IL. It was honestly the best he has ever been. He did not have one screaming fit the entire time. The first three hours I didn't hear a peep out of him, we stopped for lunch, then the last three hours he watched Sesame Street DVD's. Crossing my fingers the drive back goes as smoothly.

Friday night my high school friends came over to sit and chat. I love catching up with them and wish we could do it more than once a year (and sometimes we don't even do it that often) :(

Saturday was the big day. The day I have been planning for months. Kali's bachelorette party. It got off to a rough start when the spa called at 10am and told me that 2 of their people called in and they would only be able to take 8 of us instead of all 10. Um, not okay. I made it very clear that all 10 of us had made appointments a month and a half ago and we all needed to be fit in. It worked out in the end and everybody at least got one pampering service and some people even got two.

We checked into the hotel, then headed back to Kali's house for the party. We played games, ate snacks, and had a few cocktails. (based on how loud it was in there you would have thought we'd been drinking for hours, but really the party had just started!) Taxis picked us up at 7pm and we headed to downtown Madison for dinner at Frida's, a yummy Mexican restaurant. Apparently it's a hot place for parties because we were the 4th(!) bachelorette party there that night! We were by far the wildest (and loudest). And for some reason we were sitting in the middle of all the other parties, so we were pretty noticeable. Not that we cared. Bring on the margaritas! : )

After dinner the limo picked us up and took us on a nice tour of downtown Madison and along the lakes. The view across the water of the Capitol was amazing. Postcard perfect. Not that we cared for more than a few seconds...we quickly were back to singing at the top of our lungs. The rest of the night passed quickly as we went bar to bar, ultimately ending up at a nightclub that had a DJ upstairs and and 80's cover band playing downstairs. The finale of the night was Kali getting on stage with the band for an encore, then the entire bachelorette party joining her. It was legendary.

Due to the graphic nature of most of the photos from the night, not many can be posted on here. These are some of the tame ones. :)

Sisters

Wild Woman

Jody, Kali, and Kelsey

The Bachelorette Party on stage at the end of the night

A Little Taste

I'm slowly transitioning Kyle (and Aidan) into their new schedule of life which will begin in 10 weeks. Last week I took a shopping trip up to The Shoppes at Arbor Lake and bought myself a new summer wardrobe. No worries, even though I spent a lot of money, it was money that I've been saving for two whole years (!) for this exact purpose. I left at 9am and didn't get back until after 5pm. That left Kyle and Aidan alone for an entire day. You might not think that is unusual, but it was the first time Kyle had cared for Aidan for that long. All went well and everyone was still alive and healthy when I returned home.

This morning was the first of many summer trainings that I'm signed up for through my school district. Today was a fun one, PhotoShop Elements 6. Kyle had a it a little rougher today than he did for my shopping trip. The training started at 8:30am which meant I needed to be getting ready and out the door while Aidan was getting up and eating breakfast. Hello stay-at-home-dad. Kyle had to be up at 7am when Aidan woke up, feed him breakfast, and then all the other stuff I do every day. Again, when I got home around noon, everyone was still alive and healthy. Aidan had even had a nap and a snack. I think Kyle is going to do just fine come the end of August. (he still has some more practice days though, just in case) :)

(By the way, from now if you see a picture of me on the blog and you think, "Wow, Courtney looks awesome!" it's probably because I PhotoShopped my head onto a supermodel's body.) Just kidding. Maybe.

Rockin' Lunch Hour

We finally had the first truly nice day in over a week and Aidan and I took full advantage. The city where we live has Rockin' Lunch Hour every Thursday at noon during the summer for pre-school age kids and yesterday was opening day. It's an outdoor kid's concert and there are wading pools and streams, along with kid-sized water geysers to play in. Aidan and I walked up to the park and Molly, Charlotte, and Maggie joined us for the fun. We had a picnic lunch while the music was playing, then Aidan and Charlotte splashed around in the stream and ran around on the plaza. It was a blast! We will definitely be going every Thursday that it's nice outside if any of you readers would care to join us!

After the show was over and Aidan and Charlotte were soaked from playing in the water, we walked across the street to my favorite little ice cream shop. It was closed! Forever! It's so sad when great little places like ice cream shops have to close because they can't get enough business. There's nothing better than an ice cream cone on a hot summer day. Especially one within walking distance from your house. Since there aren't any other ice cream places nearby, we improvised with packaged ice cream bars from the wine/coffee shop next door and ate them on the patio. We had a fantastic afternoon and can't wait to do it again!

Ever Expanding

Aidan is finally starting to gain a rudimentary vocabulary. Hallelujah! I thought he was going to be babbling forever.

Mama
DaDa (just today)
Walk (sounds like "wa")
Moo
Neigh (technically a sound, but I'm going to count it as a word)
Nana
Grandma (sounds like mama, but he's definitely talking about grandma)
Ya (the MN version of "yes")
Mmmm: he uses this sound to tell us he's hungry and can also mean milk
All done (sound like "a da" and he waves his hands around...or throws his food/fork/milk on the floor) :)

BOOM!

About 5:00am this morning a thunderstorm rolled through the area, and I thought to myself, "here we go, this will wake up Aidan and he won't go back to sleep". Fast forward to 5:30am...it's still storming, thunder is shaking the house and rattling the pictures on the wall, and still not a peep out of Aidan. How in the world did the child sleep through all that noise?!?! I have no idea. It rained heavily and continued to storm, but that didn't wake Aidan. He slept until his usual 7am wake up call. I, on the other hand, did not. There will definitely be a cup of coffee in my hand today.

New Kicks

Grandma Michele took Aidan and I to the Mall of America last week to do a little shoe shopping. The shoes she bought for Aidan back at the end of March are *gasp* too small already!! We moved up a size (to a 5.5) and bought a pair of sandals and a pair of tennis shoes. The tennis shoes had to be sent from another store and they just arrived yesterday. But, the sandals have already been broken in. Since they are the only shoes Aidan had that fit him, he's been wearing them every day.

See Kai Run "Jude"

Tsukihoshi "Baby 03" in Navy

1 Year Pictures

Here are Aidan's 1yr pics from Target. The first one is my free one, the second one is the one I bought. I'm not overly excited about either of them, but I'm not about to put myself through that experience again any time soon.

Another One Bites The Dust

Today is Day One of saying bye-bye to the morning bottle. So far, so good. Aidan drank whole milk from his sippy cup while I read him a few stories in the rocking chair, then went down for his morning nap without fuss. If all continues to go as planned we will be down to one bottle a day. The bedtime bottle. I don't have any immediate plans to take that one away, even though they say toddlers should be off the bottle by 15 months. (which he will be at the end of June) Maybe after we get back from our trip to IL in a few weeks.

Today also marks the unofficial start of summer. It is June 1st, which means that in 12 weeks I will be returning to work. I've already signed up for several workshops over the summer, and learned last week that the district wants to send me to a 4-day seminar to become a Crisis Prevention Trainer. I've been certified before, in college, but not as a trainer. This certification will allow me to present workshops to my colleagues in the district. I had a few misgivings at first since 1) it means I will spend 4 days away from Aidan before I need to and 2) I didn't know if I would be paid for going. Well, the district is going to pay to the registration fee and pay me while I'm there. I guess I will be going to the training in August.