5 and 55

Last weekend we celebrated Papa Steve's 55th Birthday!!! For the past three or four years Sawyer has been making Papa some very colorful/loud/creative/attention drawing Birthday crowns! Now normally Papa only wears them at home when we do cake and presents, but this year we thought he would REALLY appreciate us bringing his crown to Red Lobster with us so that he could wear it there! (insert devilish laughing) This year Sawyer wanted to put some pictures of Pap on the crown, so we printed some out and he glued them on along with googlie eyes and a nice ring of green tissue paper balls.....Papa Steve just loved wearing it for all to see...(said the narrator sarcastically)

As usual, we went back to Nana and Papa's house to open gifts and eat cake....and for a few piggy back rides!

This is the traditional "Guy's with Glitz" picture. After all of the gifts have been opened, they always accessorize with the ribbon and tissue paper.....

Nana Kathy made these ADORABLE German chocolate cakes! They were meant to be individual ones, but my goodness.....those were big enough to make your body go into shock! They were so yummy!

5 and 55

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Bill and aren't normally huge St. Patty's Day celebrators but this year my good friend Melody was celebrating her birthday with a big St. Patty's Day Bash! To liven things up and make sure everyone was decked out in festive green, she had a gift card for the best dressed of the evening.

We started the night at Old Chicago for some pizza and gift opening (We all went in on a Kitchen Aid mixer for her which she's been wanting for a while now)

*The Birthday Girl and her husband Scott*

I actually won the costume contest! I'm not sure if it was my fake green eye lashes or the green tutu that cinched the deal, but in he end, the gift card was mine!

As you can tell, Bill's outfit was a little more toned down for the evening :)

After dinner we headed on over to the BrazenHead for drinks (well, they all had drinks and I just got dirty looks for being there pregnant....oh well!) and to listen to the live band.

Thanks for geting us all out for a great evening Melody!*

I Love These!!!

I have found myself getting into arguments with Sawyer over trying to convince of things like when I say "Only 5 more minutes till we get there" does NOT mean we will be there as soon as you count to five......or why it doesn't REALLY matter if we wear socks that say 'Wednesday' on them on Fridays.....or why we don't dip our apple slices in our ketchup just because we had some left over on our plate.......these little spats usually happen in the car....when I feel too cold with the windows down but the air conditioner has a weird smell....and I'm about a 4 on the car sick scale....and I can hear my cell phone beeping because it' just about to run out of battery but it's in my purse in the back seat and I don't feel like reaching around to get it....and the Bill has some weird song on the radio.....all these things combined don't usually set a particularly optimal environment to deliver my convincing argument to Sawyer.

It usually ends with Bill saying, "Sawyer, leave Mom alone."

Nathan Ripperger says things to his kids, and then turns his words into posters. They’re so spot-on they make me laugh! Have you ever said something to your kids and then realized just how ridiculous it sounds?

The Biker

You guessed it! My kid can ride a bike! Without training wheels!!! Wahoo!!!!!

My mom had gotten him a bike last year for his birthday and we've been trying ever since in little spurts to teach him to ride it....but to no avail. We realized that he was too short of the bike because whenever he would stand up to catch or balance himself, he would just fall over because his feet could quite touch the ground......So last weekend after yet another afternoon at the park with nothing to show for except bruised knees and scraped elbows, we went on a hunt for a smaller bike. We found one at Target and Bill took the pedals off so that he could just scoot around on it and get the feel for it.

We let him scoot around on it for one afternoon and then the next day the pedals went back on. And look what happened!!!!!!

He was SO proud of himself! Not to mention how proud Bill and I were!

Then we of course had to go over to Nana and Papa's house to show off a bit :)

He is so excited that he can actually ride a bike now that that's all we hear about these days! Which is OK! :) We are looking forward to being able ride some of the nice trails on our bikes now and not have to lug him around in the seat behind us.....he's getting heavy!

Random Updates

We celebrated Bill's 26th Birthday in January with his parents at a steakhouse here in town called 'Johnny's Cafe'. Our friends Joel and Cindy had given us a gift certificate there and it just so happened that Papa Steve used to work there as a bus boy when he was sixteen!

Thanks Joel and Cindy for the gift certificate!!!!!

We headed on over to Jone's Bros. Cupcakes for dessert and gifts :)

Skip forward a few weeks to Valentine's Day!!! We normally celebrate it with our good friends, Brandon and Laney and this year was no different except that Laney and I were/are pretty pregnant! The boys took us out to The French Cafe down in the Old Market for dinner and then to a late showing of, "The Vow". It was such a good time!!!!

Baby Bumps!

Speaking of the baby.....we have been hard at work here at our house trying to get ready for his arrival! Sawyer has moved downstairs to the guest bedroom-he loves how big and spacious the room is...although it does seem like he's really far away from us at night.....it does make me feel better that Mary is down there with him too....and so Sawyer's old bedroom is now the baby's nursery! So we have been sanding, painting and Bill was hard at work building some custom shelving for the closet! It's coming together really nicely (more photos of that later!)

While we were in Brazil, Bill and I had taken some shots of Mary running (she's a die hard runner!) and low and behold......what happened to show up on the back inside cover of "Women's Running Magazine" this month?!? One of Bill's photos of Mary!!!!

Headed For Home

There were so many other AMAZING things that we did during our trip to Brazil-everyday was something new and exciting but as for posting it all and and writing about it......it feels like such a daunting task :) So, we are going to wrap it up!

We always try and squeeze some last minute shopping in before we come back home at a little town outside the city called Embu. It's a little artsy town that has tons of little shops that sell art, pottery and the streets are lined with booths to buy handmade souvenirs.

Every time we go to Embu we always start out our day by fueling up at this little coffee place called Cafe do Ponto. Sawyer decided to go on a chocolate quest that morning and have hot chocolate and a huge chocolate muffin! :)

It's a really cute town because all the streets are cobblestone!

We sat outside for some lunch at a very traditional-style Brazilian place where they have a huge salad bar, buffet of hot dishes and then you can pick your choice of meat off of the grill and then you weigh your plate and pay that way. (For those of you who live in Omaha, there is a Brazilian restaurant just like this that just opened up called 'Galo' at the shops of legacy.)

The day that we left Brazil, we squeezed in one last lunch with our good friends that we should really call family, the Rasts. They live right next door and Sawyer thinks that their two youngest kids, Alex and Christian are pretty much the cat's meow.....

Leaving the city.....

We had a very uneventful trip home....Sawyer slept well on a blanket on the floor right by our feet and Bill and I spent the night dreaming of our comfy bed at home....

We had a little bit of a lay over on the way home but just camped out in a bookstore and read magazines....I think some people were getting a little annoyed that we took up all the padded chairs...too bad!

We had SUCH a wonderful trip!

Thanks mom for the great time!!!

Campos Do Jordao

One of the other places that we have been going to for family vacations ever since I was little is up to the mountains to a little town called Campos do Jordao. It is this quaint little town nestled in the mountains where we fill our days with reading, drinking hot chocolate, eating rich food and buying sweaters.....it's simply lovely!

So out of town we headed again! This time with Aunt Mary & Uncle Bill, cousin Walter and of course, Sawyer's buddies, Ethan & Micah :) We always try and leave at the crack of dawn to avoid the traffic and stop to have breakfast at a truck stop. (Now that sounds a bit ghetto, but it's not. There's a breakfast buffet or cases and cases of items for you to choose from. The variety is vast and the coffee is D-lish!)

One of the days we headed out to a national park to hike around and just enjoy the nature....

Everything was just so green and gorgeous!

Off to find the waterfall!

Sawyer's leap of faith to Uncle Nathanael....

I know Sawyer looks like he is a tortured soul in this picture, but I promise you, he was having a really good time! :) It was a nice walk up to the waterfalls (they were a lot smaller than I had remembered....) and we got stuck in the rain on the way back to the car...oh well!

Campos do Jordao has a lot of Swiss influence with tons of Swiss chocolate shops and fondue places! So we spent a good deal of the afternoon gorging ourselves on three courses of fondue: cheese, meat and chocolate! We were seated at a table with a spectacular view of the mountains with the fog rolling in and out-it was quite the atmosphere!

It was nice they brought us out the cheese and meat courses together so there was tons of french bread and veggies to dip in the cheese, tons of different meats and sausages to cook in the oil with an assortment of dipping sauces to try!

I think everyone's favorite was the chocolate course.....tons of different fruits to dunk in rich chocolate.....oh good heavens.....it was ridiculous.....and then when the fruit ran out, why not pour the chocolate into our glasses and drink it? Let us not be wasteful!!! :)

Sawyer and Micah 'helping' Uncle Nathanael build a fire.....

While we were in the mountains, Uncle Bill introduced Sawyer to a board game that would become Sawyer's love......'Sorry' is now THE game to play! He bought his own Sorry game as soon as we got back to Omaha and has been playing ever since!

The hotel that we stay in is owned by some friends of ours and is planted right on the side of a mountain! It is so gorgeous out there and the views are just breathtaking! It is a few miles out of town so whenever we wanted to go into town, we had to pack everyone up and drive in. Like I said before, there were tons of chocolate shops and this was one of Sawyer's favorite-with the chocolate just dripping down this fountain....

Sawyer and Micah conned Nana Jane into paying for them to be pushed around the town square in this little red car......only Grandmas.......

Aunt Mary and I sit and have hot chocolate at this certain coffee shop every trip ever since I can remember.

It is always so nice just strolling up and down the quaint little streets window shopping. We end up finding something unique and different to bring home every time we go!

Nathanael and Julie took us for our first trip to this little place called Baronesa (The Baroness) for the first time. It was this place that grows all of their own fruit (blackberries, blueberries, raspberries ect.) and has a beautiful tea room that you can hike up to and enjoy the scenery.

After winding up through beautifully manicured gardens that were plum full of bright blue hydrangea flowers, we got to this tea room that was an all glass enclosure. The pictures just didn't do the view justice.....we were on the peak of a mountain,overlooking a huge valley......

It was a little bit more of a pricey place so we all opted to do drinks and appetizers :) Bill and I shared this assortment of crostinis and oh man were they good!!!!

We also got tall glasses of their fresh blueberry juice that was just to die for!!!!

Part of the hike up to the tea room.

Bill totally fell in love with all of the eucalyptus trees and is now convinced he wants to plant them all over our backyard here in Omaha....not quite sure how they would grow in our climate....but a man can dream!

Down at the bottom of the Baronesa they also had a little store that you could sample quite a few of the different jellies and jams that they made (Bill and Sawyer taking full advantage of that!)

Sawyer and Mommy

Sawyer is always asking to use our camera to take pictures of us but we are always afraid he's going to drop it but since we were sitting in the car, we let him have a go of it...and this is what we normally get: really close up shots taken at unflattering angles.....hehe

One of the places that we went for lunch had a large coy pond where you could buy a bag of little food and feed the fish.....we didn't buy a bag of food, but this little old man thought Sawyer and Micah we super cute and kept giving them handfuls of food from his bag :)

One of the foods that I grew up on and that Bill has since fallen in love with too, is called a pastel. It's a light savory pastry crust that is filled with any sort of yumminess that you can pick out, then sealed up and flash fried for a few seconds.....I'm sure we will be eating them in heaven....you can find them being sold on just about every street corner at home and that's what we are eating in the picture bellow! And another ice cream stop :)

Our trip up to Campos do Jordao was once again a huge hit! We enjoyed the sights, indulged on excellent food and mostly enjoyed each other's company!

Yeah, so I wanted a nice family photo here at this gorgeous look out spot.......but the sun was super bright....and out of eight shots, can you believe this was the best we got?!? Good grief......