Happy Anniversary!

I can't believe its been 4 years already since that wonderful day in East Lansing!! Well we sure have done quite a bit over the last couple years from honeymooning in Hawaii, living in Puerto Rico, getting our puppy, finishing our MBAs, moving to Minnesota, and having two beautiful baby girls!

Wedding Day

Maui

Christmas Day in Puerto Rico

Surviving Bela's love of shredding paper as a puppy

Road Trip

It was such a beautiful weekend here so we decided to take a road trip on Sunday. We drove to Stillwater, MN – no particular reason for going there other than it was within a 2 hour radius of the house. It’s a little town on the St. Croix river, which makes up the Minnesota and Wisconsin border. We laid out a blanket in the shade along the river so we could feed the girls and watch the boats. It was a great way to spend the afternoon.

The girls are doing great. Last week they had a doctor appointment and were both over 10 lbs! They also had their first round of vaccinations and actually did very well – hardly any tears! Natalie’s hematocrit (iron levels) also checked out okay at this appointment . So I have two healthy little girls! I will say Kate was a little stinker this past weekend though… Lets just say I hit the trifecta of surprises (I was pee’d on, pooped on, and puked on).

Other than that, I’m just trying to get Bela (our golden retriever) back into shape. I took her to the vet a couple weeks ago and was embarrassed to find out that she was up to 95lbs!!! She gained 10 lbs just since April….an obvious sign of her neglect during my bedrest and the arrival of the twins. So I decided to take her running with me the other day and it was the most pathetic thing I have ever seen. After about 1 mile she was walking BEHIND me as I ran… I practically had to drag her the rest of the way home. I can’t believe how out of shape we’ve let her get!! It will be good for her once the girls are big enough to chase her around the house.

Here’s some updated photos of the girls. The first set of pics start with Natalie and Kate is the one with the ‘strawberry’ on her chest in the bath photos.

All Smiles

Kate

Natalie

Well quite a bit has happened since I last wrote! As you can see from the pictures – the girls are all smiles! About two weeks ago I got my first real smile from Kate while reading “Because a little bug went Ka-choo.” I had her on my lap and as soon as I said “ka-choo” her whole face lit up – too cute!! About two days later Natalie smiled for me while I was smothering her cheeks with kisses. Natalie even laughed for her daddy later that night!! What a great week that was! Another big milestone we hit last week was that Kate slept 7 hours in one night!! I was amazed and was afraid it was just a fluke – but the past two nights both girls have slept over 6 hours straight!!! Whew!! Its nice to see the 1am and 4am feedings going away!! The girls have also started to suck on their fists – which is a nice supplement to the pacifier!

The hubby and I have also had a few parenting milestones….. I went on my first trip to the grocery store alone with the girls. I knew I was taking a big risk – but needed to get out of the house. So I threw Nat in the Baby Bjorn and kept Kate in the car seat and set her in the cart and piled stuff up around her! Both girls slept the whole time. And last Saturday we were either very crazy or very brave - we invited a group of our friends over to grill out and didn’t realize until about 15 minutes before everybody showed up (while both girls were having a meltdown) that it might have been a bad idea. It ended up being a great day – but we realized that having two small babies added a new level of difficulty to having people over. Again the Baby Bjorn was put to good use – I was able to make spinach artichoke dip, drink a beer, and hold a baby at the same time!

While we had lots of great things happen theses past couple weeks, we were sad to see our good friends Chris & Suzanne leave for Austin, Texas last week. But we do look forward to having a warm place to getaway from the Minnesota winters though.

I've included a few recent pics below – I hope to post some video soon. I need the hubby to work his magic and get the files from the camcorder to the computer.