Spring Break Visitors

Dave's cousin Jean, and her kids, Jessi and Nick, visited us from Indiana this past weekend.  They were kicking off their spring break and needed a little get-away up north.  We had a really good time catching up with Jean while the kids had a blast playing together. 

The weather was decent all weekend so we played outside a lot.  Jessi and Nick remembered our play set from the last time they visited so we did a lot of swinging, climbing, and sliding plus we got out Carter's bounce house for tons of jumping and laughing.  Only one bloody nose the whole weekend (sorry Nick!) so we call that a success.  Uncle Mark, Kathy, Max, Grandma Webb, and Mark's friend Scott and his two girls also joined us.  Lots of kids, lots of commotion, lots of fun!

Nick, Carter, and Jessi on the swings.

The kids in the bounce house

Dave and Jean

Jessi and Mia in the playroom

We also took the whole gang to Meijer Gardens to see the butterfly exhibit.  Here are the kids posing as butterflies (Mia is really tall!).

Jessi, Carter, Nick, and Max

We had a really fun weekend!  Thanks everyone!

March Madness

Unfortunately I'm not talking about college basketball (although let's give a moment of joyful silence for the awesome Michigan State basketball team and their journey to the Final Four and beyond). 

The title of this posting refers to the crazy health issues Mia has been battling the past few weeks.  She started out with pink eye, then moved into double ear infections, then a diagnosis of Fifth Disease (sounds much worse than it is - more of a viral rash than anything else), and finally a bout of sporadic vomiting that lasted us close to a week.  All gory details aside, Mia is doing much better.  The vomiting has stumped the Dr.'s so they suggested cutting out dairy from her diet for a week, then gradually re-introduce it, in hopes that her stomach will get back to normal.  We hope it was simply a weird series of coincidences with maybe a flu bug or two thrown into the mix. 

The poor girl has been to the Dr. at least 4 times in the last 2 weeks but she's been a trooper through it all.  Her "one year" appointment was in the midst of all this so here are her stats:  weight 20 lbs. 8 oz. (she's lost a little since then however due to her sickness), this was the 41st%; and height - 29 inches, 47th%.  

We're looking forward to getting this all behind us and having a healthy spring!

Oh - and Go Spartans!

Happy Birthday Mia!

Hard to believe that Mia is already one year old!  We had a fun celebration for her and Dave on Sunday since their birthdays are only 2 days apart.  Grandpa and Grandma Jernstadt, Grandma Webb, Uncle Mark, Kathy, Max, the Burke Family, and Meredith all joined us for the festivities.  

 

We decided to start with the present opening (better to get as many clean shots of the birthday girl before she makes a mess with the cake).  Mia got some adorable outfits for summer, a really cute bikini, some fun new toys, books, and hair accessories!

Carter was good at helping unwrap the gifts.

Showing off her new barn.

After the presents were opened, we headed for the cake.  Since Mia loves taking a bath, we decided to make the cake look like a bath tub, complete with rubber duckies and other bath toys.   

Unlike her older brother, Mia LOVES cake!  Carter wouldn't really touch his cake when he turned one (or even today) so we didn't get that token messy face picture with him.  But Mia on the other hand, dove right in and we got plenty of pictures.  She even gave her guests some added fun by flinging her cake around the room.  Iguess she made up for whatever Carter missed out on.

The first few tastes...

  

Here we see the sugar high wearing off.

We had so much fun with everyone, thank you for helping us celebrate!