Happy 1st Birthday Grant!

Happy 1st Birthday Grant! I cannot believe that it has been an enitre year since this boy was born. It has been a most amazing journey so far. Grant is so loved by everyone that meets him and he is, of course!, a perfect fit in our little family. It has been such a joy getting to know and love him and we were all so excited to celebrate his special day. When Lillie woke up in the morning she insisted that she needed to stay home from school for it. Needless to say, she was disappointed! Samuel and I had a fun and busy day preparing for that night's party. We spent a relaxed day at home playing and preparing for the party. That night we celebrated with the Burwell side of the family and some of our next door neighbors enjoying, presents, pizza, cake, and ice-cream.
Here are the boys with Grant's decorations. Samuel helped me with everything that you see here and he did such a great job! He was super excited to get things ready for his brother. And the day before Lillie and I spent some time preparing the art you see on the wall. She also made similar "GRANT" letters that she hung on the mantle. She was also really excited to get things ready for him!

This is the one and only time Grant wore this party hat. He's usually so good with hats, but with these he would scream and cry hysterically if he even saw one so they had to be put away.

Grant's first cake made by mom. I had a lot of fun doing this one and L and S really liked it. I have a feeling that the "personal cake" might be a theme for the rest of the year!

My sister Allison with all the decorations

Grant was not super interested in the present opening but thankfully I had Samuel as a wonderful helper. I did warn him however that this is most likely the only year he will ever be able to do this for Grant!

Here is Grant with the walker/ride-on lion that Tim and I got for him. This was taken after he ate cake hence the onesie and matted down hair. He does love this thing though!

Cake time! It took about 30 seconds of prodding the frosting before he finally dug in but then he enjoyed himself. I think he ate/crumbled about a third of it before he was done.

Happy birthday buddy, I love you and I love being your mom!

Happy Family!

Year One recap:

Favorite things to do:

Play in the refrigerator

Use anything and everything for a walker

Sneak into the bathroom and unroll the t.p.

Be chased by Lillie and Samuel

Crawl under Lillie's bed

Be outside

Jump in his jumparoo

Write on the credit card machine at the checkout (absolute favorite! freaks out everytime I roll the cart past!)

Drive his Little Einsteins steering wheel

Baths in the big bathtub with Samuel

Tim. Tim is his favorite person in the universe!

Things He HATES!

Getting into his carseat

Baby Food

Favorite Foods:

ice-cream

avocados

bananas

scrambled eggs

yogurt

cheerios/kix

french fries

Talent:

So of course he is a genius baby as all of my children have been! But this kid is pretty awesome. All he has to do is see something one time and he's got it down. You show him where to push the button on a toy to make a sound or flip a switch on or make a sound with your mouth and he's got it for life! He was clapping at I think 6 months old, waving bye at 10 months, and a billion other imitations I can't think of! Lately he's also been trying to put his shoes on his feet, and hats on his head.

Nicknames:

Dad's: Grant-a-million

Mom's: Mr. Grant

Lillie and Samuel's: Grant Boy

Not too creative but it's just what fits him!

We love this boy and we are so glad that he came to our family! Happy Birthday Grant! And thank you to everyone who remembered him for afar!

Valentine's 2010 plus random fun pics

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! This is one of my favorite holidays of the year. And yes, I know about all you cynical people out there saying how this is just a "greeting card holiday, yada, yada" Please people! Everyone is out there to make a buck and if they can sell you something, they will! However, Valentine's is a holiday to celebrate the people that you love! How fantastic is that!!! I love my amazing fantastical husband and my three beautiful children and I love, love, love, having a day set aside to really get excited and celebrate that love. So, here is a slight recap of our day with pics below. We do a BIG breakfast every year but this year we have 8:30 church so we did breakfast for dinner. Pink pancakes, pink butter, (yellow) eggs! Tim would not let me dye them and I guess I have to agree with him on that one, red juice, heart shaped toast... the kids loved it and it was yum! We also did heart shaped sandwhiches at lunch. Here is Tim with the famous candy posterboard. I make one for him every year and he loves them. They are fun to do but I'm always jealous later of how much candy he has! Every year he buys my favorite, a Russell Stover's heart of assorted chocolates. He even buys the BiG box, but I go through it pretty quickly and for the next month I'm always begging him to share!

Happy 1st Valentine's Day! This little boy is so easy to love. Of course he had no idea what was going on, but he was dressed in red, and he did enjoy a red lollipop after lunch and some pink pancakes at dinner.

My parents came over in the evening with gifts for the kiddos and I snapped this pic. I just loved it so much. My dad is such a great grandad!

We heart attacked the kids bedrooms the night before while they were sleeping. It was really fun to do together and they were really excited to wake up to it.

(Yes, I know, Samuel is STILL in a crib! He just loves it and has not wanted to move out! He did just ask this evening for his "little bed" so we're going to try him out in the toddler bed that's been waiting for him in the garage.)

Okay, here are some random pics of the latest things we've been up to:

I think ice-cream is Grant's favorite food group!

Here is Samuel all ready for school in his p.j.'s which he thought was fantastic! Every year his pre-school has an annual pancakes 'n p.j.'s day.

On that same day was Lillie's 100th day of school which they make a pretty big deal about. So here she is in her 100 days project shirt and later that day she was in the 100 Days parade.

Samuel and I built a track city one day and it was really fun to do together. It lasted until Grant (a.k.a. Godzilla) woke up from his nap.

One day I found Grant eating my left over Pei Wei rice out of the trash can. BoYs!!!!! It was still hot from my lunch and it was the only thing besides craft paper in the brand new trash liner so not too terrible... so yes, I did take the time to snap a shot and let him keep eating!

Super Hero Dad, home from a hard days work.

Grant, trying to climb his way out to the big kids. Always trying to catch up. I guess that's the lot of the youngest child.

A Very Burwell Christmas

We had Christmas with the Burwell side of the family when we got back from CA and it was such a nice evening! A great dinner with left over Christmas desserts and presents. It's always so great to experience Christmas in your childhood home. I love the smell of the Douglas Fir Tree. For me, that is the smell of Christmas!
Hello? Tim? Are you back there? This ended up being the Shop Vac that Tim has been waiting for.

My mom found this awesome hat for Samuel which he is in love with and wears every where.

I thought this was cool because we have a similar picture of Samuel playing with the light up Santa on his first Christmas. I'm not sure how far this thing dates back, however I do know that it was in my bedroom window when I was a little girl. Laura had that light up Snow man in her window but I haven't seen that one in years.

Lillie got these boots from my mom abd they are her #1 shoe now. The only time she's not wearing them is when she is wearing her new princess slipper from Auntie Katie.

Merry Christmas everyone!

New Year's Day... Happy Birthday Harry!

Every year on New Year's Day/ Harry's Birthday the Doolittle's have a fun tradition that includes, lots of yummy food, football, and family. It was a lot of fun just relaxing and hanging out with the fam on our last day in Cali. The kids especially loved that there was a table full of food and goodies they could fill up on all day without having to ask. They would wander out, fill their plates up with Salami, pickles, and chocolate...yum... and wander back to their room to watch a variety of T.V. Kid Heaven. The rest of us had a great day too! Uncle Gene came down for a visit and met both Samuel and Grant for the first time and Elisabeth and Luka came down too. The kids were glad to have someone their age to play with again and Luka and Samuel really hit it off.

It was really great to be able to celebrate Harry's birthday in person again this year!

651? Or 6(5+1)? 66? There you go! Creative candle fix.

Here are the kids throwing the ball to Sandy. They loved that dog. Poor Sandy, I bet she's still sleeping it off. Those kids had her constantly running. Not to mention Grant, who by the way loved all of the animals! He thought they were hilarious!

Grant took to Uncle Gene right away!

Samuel also loved Uncle Gene and was epsecially happy when he got down on his level to play trains. We were really glad to be able to visit with him again.

These boys did a pretty good job playing together! They were sharing here. not fighting!

Montery, and the Cal Train

We spent a day in Monterey with Lillie, Samuel, Jason, and Becca. Grant spent the day in Morgan Hill with Grandma and Grandpa. Okay, so the weather was absolutely gorgeous! We all had a fanastic time and the clam chowder was magnifique!
I love you babe! (side note: sea lions were also missing here)

We took a 2 mile ride on a surrey and had a blast! Okay, so it was hard work but still super fun! I think my favorite part (besides the part where Tim had to swing his leg over the post and almost lost his leg! the kids were cracking up too!) was when Tim and Jason started waving their arms and cawing like birds as though we were flying the dang thing. So we all joined in and were cheered on to go faster by others on the path. Those brothers are crazy when they get together! Let's go get some lunch... We're starving after all that pedaling!

Cal Train - This was the thing that has most plagued the ears of Tim and I since June. Lillie came back and told Samuel how she was able to ride a real train that had 2 stories and he asked/threw fits every. single. day. about how he wanted to ride it too. So here we are. He was pretty stoked (it was awesome) because there was a real train station just like on Thomas with tunnels underneath the ground to get to different platforms. It was well worth the wait!

Racing to Platform 2 We rode through 2 zones and it took about an hour and a half. This was how he was the entire time... pointing out junctions, engines, cabooses, you name it. He was in train heaven!

San Francisco

Going to San Francisco was my most anticipated "tourist day" of the trip. It is one of my all time favorite cities and I hadn't been back since Tim and I were married. It was superbly cold, but everyone handled it really well! It was just busy enough to be exciting without having to worry too much about the kids.
In front of the Huge Tree and the head of Pier 39

I love you Grandma! Grant had such a great time with Dianne over the holidays. She took such great care of him many times while Tim and I took the kids places and they formed such a sweet bond! Here they're waiting while L and S are on the carousel.

Pier 39 carousel. Lillie had been telling Samuel about this since she rode it in June and they were both excited to ride. And luckily the 2nd level was open this time!

Lillie giving a dollar to the street perfomer. She was pretty nervous to do this so I was proud of her for getting up her nerve.

Samuel, now done with his street vendor corndog (best corndog ever! I swear!) delighted the birds with some of daddy's sourdough bread bowl.
Samuel with one of the MUNI cars. These were really awesome restored cable cars and even better, they were free. This was the best picture I could get of Samuel since he was in a somewhat grumpy mood at this point in the day. He had fun riding though!

Everyone, miuns me! at Pier 39.

Where did all the Sea Lions go? A few days after Thanksgiving the famous SF sea lions took off in droves. No one knows where they went or if they'll be back. Dissapointing, yes. But there were three that we were able to look at. And luckily SF holds all sorts of other awesome stuff for us to do.

Ghiradelli square, yum! We had promised the kids chocolate and they happened to be giving out free samples of peppermint bark... somehow the kids were satisfied with that and didn't seem to expect anything else... I love it when that happens!

Grant with some great SF background. He spent practically his whole day in the stroller and barely complained...what a sweetie!

Who doesn't want ice-cream when it's 30 degrees and windy?

Best Mother-in-Law ever!

Good Night. Grant finally crashed around 4pm when Grandma and Grandpa (who were on baby duty) bought him an SF hoodie to cuddle with. Nice and toasty!