LT2012

We had a great vacation to Lake Tahoe. Here are a few of the trip highlights:

Going on the train and airplane ("ppane" as Cameron calls it).

Stopping at Circus Circus in Reno and hitting up the kids games and ice cream shop. My dad won Cameron a stuffed elephant and Sydney got a little teddy bear.

Taking the girls to the lake, Cameron had a blast playing on the edge of the water and Sydney thought it was pretty cool to craw around and eat the sand.

Having a date night with my honey-poo to celebrate our 6th anniversary! We went to Chevy's and shared a pitcher of margs and fajitas, YUM!

Learning to play craps with my dad. It was really fun and I managed to leave the casino without loosing any money! At one point I accidentally grabbed another guys $60 and started to walk away from the table...but that's a story for another time. We'll just say I was slightly embarrassed!

Playing tennis. We didn't get to play as much as we liked, but we enjoyed the time we did get to spend on the court. Cameron like being the ball girl.

Swimming at the pool/hot tub.

Shopping at Heavenly Village and eating lunch at Base Camp Pizzeria. We got Cameron really cute rain boots and had an AMAZING Thai curry chicken pizza. (It was so yummy we actually went back so we could have it a second time!)

And, of course, happy hour.

The only down side to the whole trip was the girls did NOT sleep very well. It was a little tough having us all in the same room because whenever one of them stirred they end up seeing us and waking up. They are usually such amazing sleepers so I suppose part of the problem is we're a little spoiled at home. As it was, we were up pretty much every night with one of the girls, which meant we were all a little tired during the day and couldn't do as many things as we would have liked. Oh well. That's the way it goes when you're traveling with little kiddos.

That just about covers it. Thanks for the amazing trip Superpop and Granne! We had a great time!

Aunt "Mawk"

My Aunt Mary, a.k.a. Aunt Mac (Cameron says Aunt "Mawk") was in town last week. She was getting together with a few girlfriends in Steamboat, but before she headed out to meet up with them she came to see us for a few days. It was so great to see here. Cameron LOVES Aunt Mac and had so much fun playing with her.

She brought the girls the cutest little hats and we of course took her to check out our park.


A fun thing about Aunt Mac is she is a big Chuck Taylor girl. I remember going to her house as a kid and wanting to wear all her cool Chuck Taylor Converse high tops. Her and her friends have a thing with pink chucks, they're the Pink Chuck Chicks, and they go on trips together and stuff. It's really fun.

Well, thanks to Aunt Mac, Cameron (and now Sydney) has had a pair of pink chucks in every size since they were little bitty. When Aunt Mac showed up at our house last week she had her pink tennis shoes on and Cameron immediately wanted to wear hers too. Very cute.

Nine Months Old!

Sydney is Nine Months Old!

July 11, 2012

Weight:18 pounds, 1 ounce

Length: 27 3/4 inches

Head: 44 1/2 centimeters

Another month has passed. How is my baby getting so big already? We had Sydney's nine month doctors appointment on Thursday morning. She is 48th percentile for weight, 55th percentile for length and 68th percentile for head circumference. Overall the doctor said she is doing great. She is ahead of schedule with all of her development and motor skills and is a healthy girl. Everything has healed up from her surgery, most people would never even know any different.

The only thing the doctor was a little concerned about was her length. Her measurement this time was quite a bit lower than the growth curve that she had established. The doctor said that most likely she is just getting ready to have a growth spurt, but every once in awhile a drop like that can indicate thyroid problems. She wanted to take some blood to check and make sure that there weren't any thyroid problems. AHHHH I was kind of freaking out.

After the appointment we headed over to the lab and Sydney had blood taken—not fun at all. Poor little thing. I had to pin her down so they could get the needle in her arm. Yuck! Luckily we got a call later that evening from the doctor letting us know that everything was fine. Yay!

So Sydney, what are you up to at nine months old?

• You're still on the same sleep schedule—up at 6:00ish, two naps and down at 6:30pm.
• You are still eating like a champ. About two and a half meals a day, plus nursing four times a day. 
• You moved up to mostly 12 month cloths, still in size 3 diapers. 
• You are pulling up, standing on your own (without holding on to anything), walking along the furniture a little bit and taking a few steps with the help of your walking toys. 
• You are very opinionated. You know what you want and get mad when you don't get it. 
• You are still LOUD. You talk a ton, and the newest development (learned from your sister) you are a screamer. And I'm talking a high pitched shriek. 
• You are very curious and love crawling around and exploring and finding new things to play with. I can just sit you down and you will entertain yourself for awhile now. 
• You're obsessed with sunglasses. You pull them off my face so you can play with them all the time. 
• You took your second trip to Las Vegas this month. Geeze, two times to Vegas and your not even one yet! 
• You like to be held. You'll whimper and then hold your hands up so I'll pick you up.
• We are so amazed by how quickly you're changing. You have gotten much stronger and are doing so many new things in the last few weeks. It's been really fun to watch you! We love you so much Sydney Kate! 

Swimming Lessons

Both my girls love the water, which I'm so excited about. Cameron is a little fish and never wants to leave the pool, and Sydney loves to sit and splash (and drink!) the water. We're blessed to have several kid friendly pools in Longmont, which has been so great this summer.

Since Cameron has been doing so well in the water I figured it was about time I look into swimming lessons. I checked at the rec center and found out that the city has a whole bunch of swimming lessons during the summer. Perfect!

I signed Cameron up for the Water Explorer class. She technically isn't old enough for it yet (she's supposed to be 2 1/2) but I was so confident she'd do well in the class they made and exception. I was right, she did great! She jumped right in and had a blast blowing bubbles, kicking and crawling like an alligator across the pool! And it was seriously so cute to watch all the little kiddos.

Here are a few pictures from her first class.

Nothing like lounging and eating goldfish after a taxing swim class!

The second day.

Here's a little motorboat action (not that kind of motorboat, get your head out of the gutter people!!)

Sorry for Sydney's screaming. Sidenote on that though. Sydney is totally learning from Cameron how to be loud and scream! It's kind of funny, but kind of not when they both get going at the same time.

And we mustn't forget about miss Sydney. She was a great little cheerleader for her big sister.

The 4th of July

The 4th of July is a wonderful day for two reasons:

1) It's the day that I married my best friend in the whole world and became Mrs. Ryan Volk.
2) It's the epitome of summer, my absolute favorite time of year.

Ever since I was a kid I've loved the 4th of July. So it's only appropriate that now I get to celebrate my anniversary on one of my favorite days.

The last 4 years we've been traveling and/or going to weddings or other family events over the 4th, but this year we were able to spend the holiday at home. We had a blast! We had cinnamon rolls and bacon for breakfast (you're probably starting to see a pattern with us, this is definitely becoming our special occasion breakfast), and then we went to the kids bike parade in our neighborhood.

Quick side note on the bike parade: We used to do this in our neighborhood when I was a kid. My mom was the brain child behind the whole thing and coordinated it. We all decorated our bikes with red, white and blue and would ride around the neighborhood. It was so fun. Well, as you know, we moved into a new neighborhood last summer. We were traveling over the 4th so I had no idea what "went down" here for the 4th. I was talking to a couple of my neighbors last week and discovered that the neighborhood does nothing. SAD! There are a million kids that live here, so they should do SOMETHING fun, right? Well, like mother like daughter, I suggested we organize a bike parade. We made flyer's and signs and posted them around the neighborhood, and voila, a few days later we rocked it! We had a much better turn out than I was expecting. Ok, now back to our day.

Cameron has a couple little friends in our neighborhood who she LOVES playing with so she had a great time at the bike parade. Plus, someone brought Popsicles for all the kids to eat at the end, so she was pretty much in heaven.

After the parade we went to the park for awhile before heading home for lunch and naps.

We decided to stay close to home for the rest of the day and ended up getting together with a couple of our neighbors for dinner after the girls woke up from their naps. We were planning on going to the fireworks in town afterwards, but they were canceled because of all the wildfires. I was pretty bummed that they were canceled, I was really looking forward to taking the girls. But it's totally understandable considering the craziness of the Colorado fire situation right now.

Anytime is a good time for a dance party...

As for our anniversary. Ryan and I have now been married for 6 years! We watched part of our wedding video yesterday afternoon and it's just so funny to see how much we've changed since then. We were babies, I feel like I barely knew him then. But one thing that was true on July 4, 2006 and is still true today: I am so blessed to be married to Ryan Volk. He is a wonderful man, he is a hard worker and he strives daily to be the man God created him to be. I love you Ryan!