Mickey and Minnie Birthday Party

After our trip to Rochester and my parents trips to PA, the kids and I headed back to Phoenix for a week. I had a work trip out there and it happened to overlap with Madeline and Parker's birthday so they were able to celebrate their birthdays together for the 3rd time. Parker and Madeline love, love, love each other so I was so happy that we could do this for them. Terrisa organized the party and did all of the work. We just showed up. It was NICE! Their party was at Bounce U, an indoor bounce house place in Gilbert. There were about 20 kids or so, including Madeline's friends from her old babysitter's house. She was so excited to see them and talked about them nonstop for a couple of weeks after the party. Here are some pictures of the party...

 Sometimes Madeline acts timid, but when she's got Parker next to her, she has a lot of extra confidence. It was fun to see how brave she was on all of the bounce houses, slides, and obstacle courses.

 Last year, she hated it when we sang Happy Birthday to her. She loved it this year. George's birthday is just 5 days after hers. She spent the 3-4 days before his birthday throwing him a birthday party each night. After all, after having a birthday party, you're a birthday expert, right?! 

My mom made these adorable Minnie and Mickey cupcakes. I'm thankful to have a mom who can make professional looking cupcakes....it has saved us a ton of money over the years!

Poor little Luke was SO sick the entire time we were in Arizona. I'm not kidding, this kid was MISERABLE! He was completely unlike his normal self. It was so sad. I took him to urgent care on Sunday and they said that it was just a bad cold and teething. I was then gone for work in Wickenburg, AZ Tuesday-Thursday. My parents and George's parents watched the miserable boy and he basically wouldn't let them set him down. When I got back on Thursday, he wasn't any better so I took him to our old pediatrician. Well, turns out he had a double ear infection and croup....explains a lot! Fortunately, they got him on medication for both symptoms ASAP and he was better enough to fly home on Saturday. 

Just last week, Luke started crawling! He quickly mastered his new skill and is all over the place. He tries to keep up with Madeline (we all do), but she is just too fast for him :) Here's a little video from last night...

Rochester Trip

Still catching up on the past month. This post will be about our trip to Rochester. My entire family had plans for a trip to Rochester in October for Lindsay Armbruster's wedding. We were planning to fly-in from Phoenix, but since we moved, we just drove up. This trip was just Madeline and I. George doesn't have very much vacation time yet in his new position so he had to stay back. Luke stayed with him so it was a girl's trip for Madeline and me! 

Hannah and my cousin, Sarah, are both getting married next summer. This was the last time that the whole family will be together before both of their weddings so my mom and my Aunt Lesley threw a shower for them out at the Moore's lake house. We were in Rochester from Friday until Tuesday. On Tuesday, my parents drove back down to PA with us and stayed with us until Saturday. On Saturday (10/15), my parents, the kids, and I flew to Arizona. I had a work trip out in Arizona October 18-20 so the kids came with me and we extended the trip on either end by a couple of days. I know, hard to keep up, right? 

Here are some pictures of the shower....

It isn't a Warren shower without punch with sherbet....

The beautiful brides to be...

 Paisley, Madeline, and Parker are in both weddings. Paisley and Parker stayed back in AZ with Terrisa's mom. Madeline was more than happy to be of assistance to Hannah and Sarah as they opened their gifts :) 

Gabe and Katie's newborn, Lilah, was at the shower. She's precious and so tiny! It's hard to believe that Luke was that small just 7-8 months ago. 

 My dad, Hannah, Madeline, and I went had a nice visit with my Uncle Bob. It is always nice to spend some time with him. This was also his first time meeting Madeline.

We hit upstate New York at the perfect time....apple season.....aka cider and apple cider donut season!  The donuts and cider are unreal. My mouth is watering just recalling how delicious they were. I brought back some cider and have half a gallon frozen in our fridge. I was going to save it for Christmas and use some for hot cider. We'll see if I can hold off until then. 

The cider is so fresh. Here they are making it...

The powdered donuts are my favorite, although I love them all. 

Ok, I need to stop looking at donuts and cider because now I want some SO bad. Haha. Let's move on to the wedding pictures, shall we?

Lindsay and Jeff's wedding was beautiful. The venue, decorations, and little details were gorgeous. I thought they did such a nice job with everything. 

I only got one picture from the actually wedding ceremony at John Knox church, but I thought it was pretty good one! 

I can't remember the name of the reception venue, but it was very, very nice. 

I loved the gold jars with fall flowers...

Apparently I can't escape donuts. Instead of a wedding cake, they had a donut and pie buffet....genius! 

The head table...

Some pictures of table 12! 

Jeremiah also could not make it so Hannah and I were each other's dates. Don't tell George, but she's a better dancer :) 

The handsome couple! 

Another fun evening at the lake...

Back to present day...George is out of town this weekend for his friend Nick's bachelor party in New Orleans. Nick and Shelby are getting married on January 15 back in Arizona, so we will be heading out there for the wedding. Since we will be going back to AZ in January for their wedding, we will not be going back to Arizona for Christmas. It'll be hard not to be home for Christmas, but at least we will see everyone in Colorado in early December. The timing of our January trip will also work out perfectly with the arrival of Brian and Terrisa's baby, due in early January :) I am going to go there a week before the wedding so that I can soak in as much time with my new nephew as possible! Terrisa is now about 31 weeks so he'll be here before we know it!! And if we wants to wait to come until January 7 (the day that I get there), that's fine with me. Haha. George flew out on Friday night and will be back by this evening. The kids and I have stayed busy, but we're ready to have daddy home! Yesterday, I took them to the Please Touch Museum (a children's museum in Philadelphia). My friend, Amanda, came with me and was such a help with the kids. It would have been a complete disaster without her help. Amanda and I worked together in Scottsdale during my first year at General Mills. A year and a half ago, she moved to Minneapolis and then right before we moved to Philadelphia, she happened to move to Philadelphia as well. We both work from our homes and don't really work together, but we both work for General Mills still and chat often. She lives right in the city so after the museum, we grabbed a later lunch and took it back to her apartment. Today, I tried to get us out the 9:45am service at church, but at about 9am, things started to unravel.  Madeline was giving me such a hard time about getting ready, it was time for Luke to eat, and then right after he ate, he fell asleep. Soooo, no church for us today. I put Luke down for a nap, got Madeline a snack, and got out my laptop to blog. Madeline has been playing so well for the past hour. She is so serious sometimes when she plays. Right now, she is telling her Disney princesses what to do....and she had to call one of their moms. I have to pretend that I'm not paying attention to what she is saying. She doesn't really like us to acknowledge her when she is pretend playing. Unless she is playing restaurant or birthday party. Then she serves us food, makes us eat, tells us to finish our vegetables before we eat our cupcakes, etc. I might attempt a trip to King of Prussia mall when Luke wakes up. We have the double stroller so that helps a ton. 

I'll post later this week with the details on our trip to Arizona.