Cory and Heather's wedding

These pictures are all out of order. Sorry!

Max eating a piece of the wedding cake.


Standing in line for the dollar dance with his Aunt Heather.


Dancing with his Aunt Heather.


Near the end of the night, when he (clearly) was wedding-ed out.




Pictures before the wedding. You can't tell because it's zoomed in, but Max was looking up at his Uncle Cory for what I can only assume was some reassurance. He was a little uneasy about being up with a big group of fancy dressed people.


Proof that he just might be the world's cutest ringbearer.


A family picture. Pretend that Max is smiling and happy in this picture.


Grandpa Pete, Max, and Brian.


I love this one because he looks like such a little boy (as opposed to a baby).


Max and his Grandma Kathy.


Uncle Cory and Max.


Uncle Cory, Max, and Brian.


Max and Drew, the other ringbearer.


The wedding party.

Max's Birthday Party, Round 1

Since Max's actual birthday fell during vacation at Wildwood, we decided to have a very small and informal party for him. Since I'm quite possibly one of the least domesticated mom's ever, I decided to go with the very unimpressive cupcake birthday dessert. Cousin Atticus was the designated sprinkle applicator, and he did a stellar job. (He even accidentally decorated the floor for the party!) :)




Grandpa Tom, Grandma Nancy, Uncle Brad, Aunt Sarah, Bekah (Sarah's sister, who we've decided is my sister-in-law-law), cousins Atticus & Dietrich, Great (aka Grand) Aunt Linda, and the Dane family (Bill, Annette, Dennis, and Shannon) all attended the party. We were all happy to see that Max made the classic messy birthday cake photo ops plenty!

oh wow. it's been awhile since my last blog.

So, it's officially been a year since Max was born. Well, no, that's a lie. In 2 hours and some minutes (I'm way too lazy to do math right now), it will be an official year. I knew it would go by fast, but I didn't expect it to be quite this speedy. I can't decide if that's a wonderful thing or a sad thing, but seeing as how each day gets happier and Max gets cuter, I'll go ahead and say that I'm okay with it. Either way, time's just going to keep going by, so I might as well embrace it, right?

We're currently at Wildwood in Grand Rapids, MN. It's Max's first trip to the lake, and when I take the time to reflect, it seems pretty amazing that 27 years ago, I was here doing the same thing that Max is. Maybe I'll try to find a picture of that when I get home so that we can compare. For now, just the current ones will have to do:

pics with captions

i used the wrong focus on this picture, but if you look carefully you can see a smile on max's face. he LOVES the animals. melvin is his favorite, but brutus is a close second.


picture #1 of me attempting to get max to practice crawling. at the start he was decently content. (note the ever present drool dripping off his chin.)


picture #2. blowing raspberries and beginning to get bored with the activity.


picture #3. a good, solid minute into the tummy time, he's done.


i rediscovered a toy that one of the grandmas got max for Christmas. he was totally in awe of the flashing nose on the bear.


seriously. he hasn't seen anything this cool since the jumbotran at the iowa state game.


brian and i are calling max "the hillbilly baby" right now. in this picture you can sort of see his one upper tooth poking through.






going along with the whole teething thing, max slobbers a lot right now. see it dripping off of his chin?




just a cute one.




and more of the same.

yay for spring!

i've been itching for spring weather for many, many reasons, but one of them is just simply so that i can get max outside. he and i went for walks last fall, but the little guy was only weeks old and slept through pretty much everything. now that he's older, he can enjoy his surroundings a lot more. i've only taken him for a few walks since the weather got warm(er), but he seems to really like them. (and kathy and brian, who have also taken him on a few walks, confirm this.) he swings his legs, babbles and blows raspberries, and bangs his pacifer (or anything else handy) on his stroller. it's all, as usual, very adorable.