I am so excited to share some of Ada’s first birthday pictures we recently did. I am so happy with how they came out and cannot be more excited to get ready for her First Birthday next weekend! I can’t believe how fast this year flew by and that she is already one. More to come on this topic! The photos we’re all done by Dan’s Cousin Ashley May Photo, who has done a great job with all of Ada’s first year photos, and we are so grateful to have a photographer in the family!
Every year since I was 16 my friends from high school and I have gone to our friends dad’s place out on a small lake in Batavia, NY. This year was the 11th year (I think) that we have been going, and I was so excited to introduce Ada to a place where my friends and I have made sooo many memories! Since this particular camping trip is a bit reckless and rowdy, we didn’t feel it was appropriate to spend the night, but we thought we would drive up and spend the day at the lake with everyone. I was sad to not get to spend the night, since it’s always a good time, but I’m also not really good at late nights or drinking anymore, and since there are few things worse then having to be a parent and being hungover, I tend to limit myself. Despite not spending the night, we had a great day. Ada even took a nice long nap for me in the stroller so I could enjoy the afternoon with my friends.
I think she enjoyed herself, she was the first of our second generation to make an appearance at this annual party, which was kinda cool. Next year Dan and I will be sure to get a sitter though!
Two of the 11 weddings we have this year were for 2 of Dan’s cousins of which who are two of our best friends. 4th of July weekend we had Dan’s cousin Chuck’s wedding who married the beautiful MaryAnn. Dan was a groomsman in that wedding so I took Ada to church with me and she was wonderful and fell asleep on me like 2 minutes in, so I didn’t have to worry about her making a peep.
I dropped her off at my parents house afterwards and met up with Dan at the reception. Such perfect weather for a beautiful couple! Here are a few pictures I took from that day!
Just last weekend we had another wedding for Dan’s Cousin Amy who also happens to be one of my best friends. She had an adorable DIY wedding, she made almost everything herself from her bouquets to her sash on her dress, the centerpieces and more. It was another beautiful summer day to watch them tie the knot! Again we brought Ada to the church for her 3rd wedding and took her to my parents for a sleepover. Here are some more wedding pictures from their happy day!
Every year on the 4th of July we go to my friend Jill’s house for a pool party. For now, we’re the only ones with a kid, Ada is still pretty young so it wasn’t too much of an issue, but next year we’re going to have to do something different. I look forward to this pool party so much every year because it just screams summertime! It’s always beautiful weather, hot and sunny and ALL our friends come over to play. We play games in the park across the street from her and then walk over to her house and grill burgers, snack and drink beer until it’s time to walk to the fireworks. This is just the 4th of July for us!
Having Ada was different this year but still fun since she is at that age where everyone just loves to play with her and hold her. She isn’t mobile on her own yet so we just played in the grass, walked around the park and then let her splash around in the pool.
We decided to forego the walk down to watch the fireworks and instead met up with Ada’s friend Abby and did something a bit more child friendly. We still went to watch the fireworks, but we drove somewhere else, and just parked off the side of a parking lot so we could make a quick escape. Both the girls fell asleep before the fireworks ended anyway!
I’m a little behind on posting these, but Ada had a great first Easter, she got her first Easter basket, which I am obsessed with, I found it here on Etsy, and had fun pulling out all the stuff. She just got some little things this year, since she doesn’t know the difference. But I had fun putting something together for her anyway.
In her basket she got an Easter book, the Sesame Street cell phone, some little bunny socks, a little bunny onesie and a sippy cup (that she won’t be using for awhile still)
We had our first wedding of the year at the end of May, which was for one of my closest friends from High School, so it was a ton of fun to have so much of our gang all in town and back together. It was also Ada’s first wedding. We just brought her to the ceremony and to the middle party, then she got dropped off at Nana and Grandpa’s house so we could go to the reception.
The weather has been so nice out lately that I did a little photo shoot with my two favorite people out in the front yard.
Yesterday was my 10 Year High School Reunion! I can’t believe it’s been 10 years already! (doesn’t everyone say that?) It feels like just yesterday still that I was roaming those hall ways and cheering at football games. I am fortunate enough to still remain so close with so many of my high school friends so I didn’t feel like there was a lot of pressure going back. My class was very close and I think a lot of other groups of friends, that weren’t my friends, all stayed close too and that was cool to see.
I was on the reunion planning committee. I feel like most of the pressure was there. Trying to please everyone, trying to make decisions that people wouldn’t bash on social media was impossible. We quickly had to learn when we posted something to Facebook that we couldn’t take it to heart because there will always be those people who hated High School and have nothing good to say about reuniting with anyone there. And that is fine.
We ended up hosting a really good event and we got a TON of positive feedback afterwards. Even from a lot of the nay-sayers on social media. It was a very rewarding experience because I think we did bring a lot of people back together, and there were a lot of people who came from out of town to be there and that was exciting. I’m not sure I will voluntarily organize the 20th reunion, but I have a feeling the same committee will get roped in again since no one else will likely step up to the plate. We’ll see, for now we can sit back and let another ten years fly by and hopefully I’ll remain friends with most of my high school crew for many years to come!
We took our first family vacation last week to Washington D.C and baby girl was amazing! 6 months is really the best age! She was so much fun and was so excited to see everything, yet still little enough to transport easily and would still take nice long naps in the stroller. We traveled with our friends who also have a little girl who just turned one in February. It was a long car ride (about 8 hours) but both girls did great, we had so much fun and I would definitely do it again a million times over!
We visited the The National Zoo on our first day and lucked out with the best weather, not too hot but nice and sunny! Ada slept for most of the morning, but she got out of the stroller long enough to see the Panda Bears, the elephants and some of the monkeys.
After the zoo we had lunch at an awesome Lebanese Restaurant called Lebanese Taverna! We then took the metro to downtown D.C and strolled passed some pretty famous buildings.
Our second day we ventured back into D.C and attempted to tour the Capitol Building, apparently security is pretty tight around there and they wouldn’t let us go in with 5 water bottles, and 2 huge overstuffed diaper bags, so we just walked around the building, saw all the beautiful Cherry Blossoms then headed over to the Smithsonian Buildings.
We first did the National Air and Space Museum. I had Ada in the baby Bjorn Carrier and she was loving life. Girlfriend was soooo excited to see everything, I’ve never heard her giggle, coo and smile so much in such a short amount of time!! We had lunch at a great Mexican restaurant called Oyamel Cocina Mexicana which was fantastic and I had a phenomenal mojito!! After lunch we did the Natural Museum of History and Ada decided as soon as it was dark and cool that she would take a little nap. So she slept through that whole museum too! Luckily she won’t remember this trip anyway (and hey, everything is free in D.C)!
Our last full day we played it more low key, the babies we’re getting tired of constantly being packed up so we walked the town of Old Alexandria where we stayed. We walked down the shops to the waterfront and just strolled in the sun, we then decided to have some drinks and a light lunch at any place with an outdoor patio, so we strolled back up the street and sat outside enjoying the nice weather at 3 different places (nothing like bar hopping with babies!) It was just the low key afternoon we needed though, the babes were so good and they loved sitting in our laps in the shade.
We left fairly early on Sunday and made it home before bedtime. I was lucky enough to have Monday off of work so I had an extra day to get caught up and spend some quiet time with my little lady.
I am just loving every single minute with her lately, she is absolutely amazing to watch right now as she figures everything out. We started eating cereal and some veggies about 2 weeks ago and while its been tricky and a little frustrating at times, she’s starting to get the hang of it and gobbles everything I give her right up. She will reach for everything that is just a tad out of reach and watching her struggle to figure out how to get to it is amazing, she’s starting to try to twist those little legs underneath her and balance on one foot or a knee, which means crawling is right around the corner. She’ll use me as her stabilizer only to pull herself up to a stand, and will pull on everything else that’s nearby to help her get to where she wants to be. On our car ride home I was sitting in the far back seat of the van so the babies we’re facing us, and I just watched her as she moved her fingers and hands around in front of her face trying to figure out what else she might be able to do with them (like get herself into all sorts of trouble!) Going back to work this week was much harder then when I went back after maternity leave. She’s just so interactive and fun now that I want to spend all day just playing and teaching her things!
All in all it was a terrific family vacation and Ada was at a really great age to travel with! Would highly recommend D.C with kiddos and even so with a 6 month old!
I am so lucky to have an amazing photographer in the family that I can call for a photo shoot whenever I want one! Enjoy my little Ada’s 6 month photos!! I can’t believe she’s 6 months already! Where has the time gone??
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| Blue headband from CaliandMeBoutique – Navy TuTu from Target |
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| St. Paddy’s hair bow is from TuttaBellaBoutique |
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| Navy headband is from CaliandMeBoutique |
I know March is already almost over but I meant to do a nice post about our 2013 for the record book. Last year was filled with so much fun and excitement as well as some big life changes. As everyone jet sets into 2014, I wanted to take a minute to remember what an awesome year we had.
January-
The beginning of the year started out just like any other year! Drunk on New Years Eve followed by some fun nights out. Here is the picture we posted on Facebook wishing everyone a Happy New Year as well as my last crazy night out before we found out that life was about to change.
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| Happy 2013! |
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| My last crazy night out |
February-
Technically we found out at the very end of January, but we told all our family on my 27th Birthday, February 3rd, that Baby Mags was expected in September/October. We also celebrated our last Valentine’s Day alone and began our kitchen renovation!
March-
In March we traveled to South Beach in Miami for a Half Marathon. I didn’t know when I signed up for this that I would be 8 weeks preggo, but we went down anyway with our friend Paul. Him and Dan completed the half with little to no training and I decided I would be better off to stick with the 5k since I was having very bad back pain at the beginning.
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| My shirt says Running for two, which is hard to read here! |
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April-
In April we took our last vacation childless to La Romana, Dominican Republic. We went down with a few of my girlfriends from High School, and some guy friends of theirs who became our new friends too! We had an awesome trip, Dan came back 10 pounds lighter from some sort of stomach sickness and we took our announcement photos so we could make our big news “Facebook Official”
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| Our Facebook Post read: “Dan and I are excited to announce the new addition to our family! Baby Mags will be here in early October!” |
May-
In may we found out that our new little addition was a baby GIRL! We shared the news with a fun gender reveal party. I also went out and celebrated my sister’s soon to be marriage at her Bachelorette Party!
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| Me with a bunch of my girlfriends |
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| All the babies that were to come |
Ada’s first Halloween she was my little lady bug! She did such a great job playing the part too, just look at those little bug dimples!
All Kinds of Happy 
