Enjoying the Weather

We've been having a lot of fun with McKinley outside ever since it decided to warm up just a little. I thought I would share some of the pictures we've taken. We did take them with the phone though, so the quality isn't that awesome.
When it was rainy, McKinley stomped in all of the puddles outside. She came in soaking wet!

On a less rainy, but still chilly day, we went to the park and she worked on her jumping:

On a sunny warm day we headed to the park and she went down the slides, she loves the slides and can see them out our back door!

This is what happened when Robbie told her to smile:

We're looking forward to more warm weather!

Our Sweet Little Girl Turned Two!!

I can't believe McKinley is two. Two years went by so fast! We had some family over for a party and she was a little bit shy at first, but warmed up when her little cousins got there and she could eat dinner with them at their own special table. We had some of her favorites for dinner, rolls, broccoli and stroganoff.

After dinner, we started off the fun with a Tinkerbell pinata. Robbie and I have a little fire bat, so we let the little girls take swings-and yes, Great Grandpa got hit in the knee with the bat which I can only imagine hurt really bad, but he just laughed it off...thanks Grandpa, I hope there isn't permanent damage. Calista preferred to watch while McKinley and Abi seemed to love hitting it. When they weren't getting through the pinata with the bat, we let them just pull the strings off the bottom and it opened a little "trap door" and all the candy come out.

McKinley has been loving Tinkerbell since about February when got a cool Tinkerbell bracelet from my Grandma. So, after the pinata we pulled out her Tinkerbell birthday cake:

Blowing out the candle with Daddy.

She ate her cake like such a big girl, I couldn't believe it. Although, she does love to use her shirt as a napkin....as you will see in the present opening pictures where there is chocolate all over her clothes!

We saved the presents for last and she had a great time opening and got some really fun stuff from everybody.

It was really funny when she opened clothes, because she would just throw them to the side and keep looking in the box for a toy or something!

Her birthday was great and ever since then we can't get out of the house without coloring, playing in her tent and having a tea party! Thanks everyone for coming and making it such a special and fun day!

Robbie is the Master

...of Health Administration! That's right...he graduated! Hooray! His graduation was on Friday and it was so great. McKinley would randomly point down at Robbie in the crowd, wave and say "hi daddy" all through the graduation. When they called his name and he was walking across the floor to be hooded by his professors she kept yelling over and over and over "That's my daddy!", pointing and smiling and making sure everyone in ear shot knew who he was. I'm not sure who was more proud, her or me!

McKinley and I are really proud of Robbie, it's a big accomplishment to be done with his Master's Degree and we're really excited. McKinley had become really good at saying "my daddy at school", so it will be nice to have him home more.

After graduation we went out to dinner at Olive Garden, the wait was crazy since we had a party of 15, but the food was delicious and they gave us four appetizers for free, so Robbie was loving it.

Thanks to everyone who came and celebrated and thanks for the congratulations of those who couldn't be there. It was a great day!

Easter

Easter was a lot of fun at our house. We dyed eggs the day before and McKinley had a great time. It was funny to watch her throw the eggs into the cup of dye instead of place them nicely, good thing we were prepared with covering over the table. The Easter bunny came and hid the eggs and McKinley did a really good job of finding them. We went to another Easter Egg Hunt later that day at Grandma's house. I think McKinley still wishes there were Easter Egg Hunts every day!

Here she is in her Easter Dress with her basket from Nana and Papa. She loves that basket and we still have it out to play with now!

Dying Easter Eggs:

Hunting for the eggs:

Hating her new swimsuit:

My Easter Bunny cupcakes:

Bunny ears and an Easter Basked from Uncle Matt and Aunt Leslie:

Egg Hunt at Grandma's:

First Real Easter Egg Hunt

I call it the first real Easter Egg Hunt, because last year we hid some eggs in the living room for McKinley and although she found them, this year she was much more excited. McKinley was invited to her first Easter Egg hunt early this month. Cooper had McKinley and Ruby over to play with toys, eat lunch and find eggs! Lunch was pizza, so McKinley loved it. Here is a picture of the little crew before lunch, this is where I discovered that it is ridiculous to expect three toddlers to look at the camera at the same time:

The hunt is on. McKinley was so excited when she saw the eggs, she started running to get them. She also found bubble and a chalk egg:

Thanks Cooper for having us over, it was a blast!

I'm Done Pouting.....

About all the stuff I lost from my hard drive and I'm ready to sit in front of the computer again. So, here is my first post in quite a while. Robbie and I bought McKinley some sunglasses for Valentine's Day. She has loved them ever since. In fact, once they're on she doesn't really want them to be taken off!

About two weeks ago Robbie made this comment and then asked me to blog about it, so Robbie this one is for you! Here is a picture of cute little McKinley in her awesome sunglasses:

And here is a picture of Sid the Science Kid's grandmother, who Robbie has decided she looks exactly like when she's wearing her sunglasses! :) Sorry McKinley, Daddy made me post it!

I Can't Belive It's Really GONE!

So, you want to know why I hadn't blogged in a while until the other day. It's because I hate computers. When I look at my computer I just want to walk away!
A similar thing happened to me once before. 6.5 years ago to be exact. It involved a dial up connection, Bear Share, downloading for 72 hours straight to get the the 27 hours of Harry Potter Audio CD to listen to on a trip and it ended in my computer getting a virus in the form of a worm. The worm slowly ate at our computer and we had to reformat it, but back then we didn't have a digital camera, so other than a few essays for school, we didn't lose much. That was totally my fault, but what happened recently is not totally my fault, but wouldn't be as bad had I just backed up my hard drive.
As much as I love my sweet little McKinley, I'm surprised by all the stuff I just don't have time to do anymore because I'm so busy with her. So, the last time we backed up our external was right before she was born in April 2008.
About 2 weeks ago I turned on my computer and it just never started. It sat on that screen with the windows bar and never went anywhere. Robbie was good enough to spend the time on the phone with Dell this time and after 5 hours they determined that by NO FAULT OF OURS the hard drive just crashed. It's under warranty so they came to replace it and now it works great. Unfortunately all of the video, pictures, scrapbook pages and scrapbook kits that were on the computer are GONE! I'm so sad. Robbie took the hard drive to about 5 places before he found one that could do anything with the hard drive at all. After two scans and four days they called back yesterday and NOTHING from the hard drive is recoverable. I HATE computers.
Things I won't get back that I miss the most: cute video of McKinley's rolling over for the first time, crawling for the first time, going up the stairs for the first, eating peas and shuddering, walking for the first time, this funny thing she did with her spit, the ride she and I took (when she was 8 months old) on a sled when we lost control and jumped a ditch...all gone. I spent a lot of time on scrapbook pages, but hadn't printed them yet, so they're gone. I also collected a lot of scrapbooking kits that are gone as well. I can get a lot of pictures from my mother-in-law, so at least I'll have those. Some of the videos I have on the blog, so I can get those back, but most are gone forever. I guess I'll put backing the external hard drive back on my priority list.