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.

Hair Cut

That's right, McKinley got her first real haircut! When she was a baby the top was growing in a lot faster than the side, so I would periodically cut it so it would not look as much like the "reverse mullet" that we called it.Well, after 21 months of cute little curls hiding the craziness that was her hair, she was starting to look a little shabby, not even the curls could hid it anymore. A few Saturdays ago we packed up in the car and took her to Cookie Cutters. She LOVED it!

When we first got there we had to wait a few minutes, but that was ok because the have a big playhouse and slide...it's a toddler's dream! When McKinley's name was called she (I) picked out a pink car to sit in and an Elmo video to watch. McKinley is SUPER shy, so I was worried she would cry and be sad when a stranger started touching her head, but these people really have it figured out. Between the car and Elmo, holding my hand and the occasional reassurance from Mom and Dad, McKinley was happy (though tentative) the whole time.

It was awesome. They ended up taking a few inches off to even it all out. But somehow they only took like 15 minutes and they even roll brushed her hair while they blew it dry. Quite the experience for a toddler who is used to a quick snip with fabric scissors on her hair.

Here she is, it looks to me like she's trying to decide if she's ok with this experience:

For the first little while she wouldn't let go of my hand cause she was a little nervous:

Here is how long her hair was before the haircut:

Here she is enjoying a little Elmo:

I think this one is funny, I've decided she's thinking, "lady, leave me along, I'm trying to drive a car and watch Elmo here":

Finished product, though not an awesome shot:

Picking out her balloon:

*Next new experience...the Dentist. I don't have an appointment scheduled for her yet, but I'm just sure it's going to be interesting!*

Skiing with Robbie

So, you might remember that last year I tried skiing for the first time post-femoral neuropathy and I made it two full runs before my legs were too exhausted for me to walk anymore. Well, I've spent a lot more time working really hard and building the muscle back in my legs. So, Robbie and I decided it was time to try skiing again. The day couldn't have been more perfect is was warm and not windy at all, but the snow was still soft; a gorgeous day!

Anyway, it was really funny because Robbie went picture crazy, there are tons of pictures of me skiing, like he was a proud dad or something. I was laughing so hard. I can only imagine that he will do the same thing (only probably worse) to McKinley on her first day of skiing!

The skiing went a lot better than last time. I was able to ski for a half day and not be so tired that I had a hard time with stairs afterwards. It wasn't quite like skiing used to be. I used to love doing the black diamonds and moguls and going off jumps and through the trees and trying to stuff that was too hard for me and crashing all over the place and just being crazy. I'm not quite to that level but we did a lot of blues and some greens and I played in the trees a little and went on some bumpy runs. It was so fun to be up on the mountain again, I had a blast!