Happy Birthday Aunt Kari!

What?! Aunt Kari is HOW old??

Katherine certainly can't count to 29, but that didn't stop her from joining in the birthday fun today!

We hope Aunt Kari's year is filled with joy, and we look forward to "officially" celebrating her birthday this Friday!

Happy, Healthy, Looooud baby!

Katherine wanted to be sure the whole world (or at least all of Pittsburgh) heard how her 1 year check-up went. She tried to tell everyone by screaming as loud as she possibly could (which is preeeeetty loud), throughout her doctor's appointment, but finally accepted Mommy's suggestion to just blog about it instead.

Katherine checked in at 18lbs, 3oz (around the 25th percentile) and 29.5 inches (around the 60th percentile). The doctor pronounced her to be in great health, although he probably had trouble believing Mommy and Daddy when we bragged about what a happy, easy baby she's been.

After being stripped, weighed, measured, poked, and having lights shined in her eyes in ears, Katherine got 3 shots. Not even patty cake could cheer her up at the doctor's office, but some ice cream when we got home sure seemed to help. :-)

We certainly aren't complaining-- we'll take a screaming baby as long as she's healthy any day! We hope you understand that we didn't try to get pictures during the appointment, and decided to just share Katherine playing with her birthday car from GG instead!

Happy Birthday Katherine Elisabeth!!

Happy Birthday to our Little Cupcake!!

March 18, 2011:

This has certainly been the fastest, happiest year of Mommy and Daddy's life. We give great thanks to God for our beautiful daughter, and for the wonderful support we have from family and friends.

We had a fun cupcake themed celebration today. Here are some highlights:

Singing Happy Birthday:

Blowing out the candles:

Tasting into her own cupcake:

Yum, yum yum!

Enjoying the MANY fun presents:

We were blessed with beautiful weather and got to enjoy time outside!

Overall, this was the perfect celebration to end a perfect first year. Happy Birthday Katherine! May you continue to grow in grace and wonder every day.

Springtime :-)

Our whole family has been loving every minute of Springtime weather we've had both in Houston and at home! Here are some pictures of Katherine enjoying a bit of sun:

At the park with Oma:

Enjoying Texas wildflowers (and her Origami) on a walk in Friendswood:

Playing on the slide with Daddy on a lunch break in Pittsburgh:

We're especially excited about exploring Pittsburgh playgrounds as Katherine becomes more mobile. She sure loves swings, and is starting to enjoy slides too. We're hoping the great Spring weather continues so we can enjoy the whole season!

Happy Birthday Aunt Mary!!

Happy Birthday Aunt Mary!! Luckily since Houston time zone is 1 hour behind Pittsburgh we just hardly qualify for getting this post up on your birthday. ;-)

Katherine heard it was your birthday and tried to run all the way up to Pittsburgh to give you a big birthday hug:

Mommy's back got tired from leaning over though, so she settled for sending you a kiss instead:

We hope you had a wonderful celebration, and can't wait to give you big birthday hugs when we get home!

Howdy!

We've been having a blast on our Texas trip! The weather has been absolutely perfect-- 75 and sunny every day! (rain is predicted for the second half of the week, but we really can't complain). We've  been enjoying long walks, lots of dogs, and especially the people!

Here are some pictures from the week:


On our way to the Houston Rodeo:

Yee-haw! (we sadly lost this hat about an hour after buying it):

The baby chicks were a favorite with Katherine. She giggled at them for almost 10 minutes straight:

Katherine has LOVED playing with the dogs, and learned to make friends with them by sharing her food. Here she figured out how to open her bag of Cheerios, dumped a pile on the floor, and crawled away. Hapmton was a happy dog!

It's been a perfect trip so far, and we can't wait to see what the rest of the week brings!

Picture Perfect

One of Katherine's new favorite past-times is looking at pictures of family that we keep around the house. This morning during breakfast she started pointing to the fridge, indicating that she wanted to see pictures. I gave her a favorite picture of Oma and Opa as you can see below. She happily points to them, and even gives them kisses (I had a hard time capturing the kiss picture)! 

We're all super excited because tomorrow we'll get to go to Texas and see Oma and Opa for real! Katherine is sure to have some kisses saved up to share with them then too. :-)