2015 Week Eleven | March 9 - March 15

After a beginning of the week that was same-old, same-old, the second half of the week brought spring break.  

Spring break began with Ian's first sleepover. I picked him and his best friend up after school and they had so much fun exploring the woods behind our house... 

playing X-BOX... 

and air hockey.  It was a success and I'm sure he'll be back a lot.  He's such a polite and loving kid; Ian couldn't have chosen a better one for his best friend.  

We met Ian's friend's mom at the school playground, and after playing outside for awhile, it was hot and, being the person that I am who never passes up a reason to have ice cream, we headed to DQ to cool down. 

The kids had fun at the school playground the day before (it's not the school Ian attends- he goes to one farther from home, but closer to where I work), so we decided to ride bikes to it the next day and play again.  I opted to "walk" so I could help Annaliese on the hills, but when she was on flats, I ended up running to keep up.  I think this will be a common thing this summer, and hopefully she won't need my help on the hills and I can ride my bike, too.

Having fun at the park swinging. 

That weekend there was a birthday party for my grandma.  In route, we realized Ian had forgotten his books at home. The kid reads three to four hundred pages a weekend, so this was a huge catastrophe.  Kindle, McDonald's wifi, and a public library that allows Kindle checkouts to the rescue.  He discovered the "Heroes in Training" series and was in heaven... once we constructed some shade so he could see the screen. 

The birthday girl's party was a luau theme at a hotel pool. Youngest 85-year-old I know.  She loved watching her great-grandchildren having fun in the pool 

The kids only got out to eat, and when my aunt we were supposed to stay with came down with the flu, the kids convinced me to stay at the hotel so they could swim in the morning. Hoping for some great weather this summer so we can enjoy our pool at home.  

On the drive home on Sunday, I may have planned it so that we left the motel at the perfect time to stop by Steak and Shake for lunch... just to make Darrin, who stayed home (something about a recently broken leg and a four-hour car ride...)  jealous.  The kids were complaining when we got there, and asking to stop the next time we drove by when we left.  Nothing beats their shakes and cheese fries.  YUM!

One Week Ago...

we were in the Quad Cities visiting family and celebrating a first birthday. 

When we first arrived at my grandpa and grandma's, Ian shot lots of pictures of his toys.  Here he's showing great-grandpa all the shots he got.

Annaliese would run around the room, giving kisses to everyone. I snapped one of grandma, too, but had my camera settings wrong. When I asked her to do another, I got the typical almost-2-years-old answer: NO and then running off.

Annaliese spent a lot of time wiping her baby's butt and putting on the diaper (which is as big as the baby).

Ian and his toys.  He got the car for lunch at Steak and Shake.  He would set these up and take many, many shots of them with his camera, and then play good guys/bad guys with them.

At Great Billie's, there was lots of banging on the piano.

Ian taught Great Billie how to play lots of his games on the Kindle Fire.  Here they're playing Memory together. 

The Birthday Boy, who spent most of his time walking around, playing with the paper, and let the older kids open his presents for him.

It was a long weekend and they both slept for 1.5 hours in the car on the way home.

On the drive home, we saw a perfect sunset for a perfect weekend.

Brad & Katie's Wedding

Last Saturday my cousin Brad married Katie. It was an outdoor ceremony, and while it was a bit warm, I'm so thankful it wasn't this past Saturday but a week ago. It was beautiful and romantic, as all weddings should be. But more importantly, it was time with family.

Before the wedding, we had to get a family picture of us all dressed up.  My parents, my sister and her family, and us.

The bride and groom. They'd eventually move and stand under the pagoda he built just for this day.

The song everyone is dancing to- "We Are Family."  What you can't see is my 81-year-old grandma (Great Billie) sitting on a chair in the middle of the group holding her great-grandson Brady (6 mos old).  Everyone in this picture is related to her in some way. This song is requested at every Warnecke wedding and is carried out in the same way.

Not sure if you noticed in the picture above, but Annaliese is tuckered out in my arms.  She slept like this through all the noise- it was amazing.

The best thing for me at the weddings- watching Ian dance.  He and Makenna got their groove on. 

Spinning Makenna around.  Wish I had video capturing them dancing together, and Ian dancing alone.  He was a maniac and so darn adorable on the dance floor.

Great Billie with all 10 of her great-grandkids.  Number 11 will arrive in December.

Annaliese didn't sleep forever, and she wasn't to be outdone by her big brother on the dance floor.  She strutted her stuff, too.

Weekend Wedding

Here are some highlights of my cousin's wedding this weekend in Davenport:

The young couple in love

After the groom kissed the bride, Ian kissed his sister.

The 3 ring bearers carried these signs out when the ceremony ended.
The other sides said, "Here comes the bride," which they showed when they escorted her.

All the kids had loads of fun on the dance floor waiting for the wedding party to arrive.
Ian loved it when the Cha Cha slide came on. At one point he was in the middle of the crowd trying to copy what they were doing. He eventually discovered being on the end worked better. It was so cute because they'd say stomp, the crowd would, then Ian would; or they'd all hop, and then he would.

It's a little hard to tell in this photo, but to remove the garter, the groom laid down on one of those boards you lay on when working under a car. He stopped on his way as he was walking up to the bride, asked if anyone knew a tool man, because he needed the right tools to get the g off, and his now father-in-law brought it out for him. Cutest garter removal I've ever seen.

It was a blast. We all left the party at 11:00 exhausted. Annaliese got passed around from one person to the next, and slept maybe a total of 30 min the 6 hours we were there, but was never fussy (so glad our happy baby is back!). And that night was so full of energy she took forever to wind down and sleep.

Our Week in Pictures

It's been a week since I last posted and a lot has happened since then, but instead of writing about it, I thought I'd just let the pictures tell the story (click on one if you'd like to see it larger).

Good Friday Ian helps my 2nd cousins dye Easter eggs.

We snapped a family picture while we were all together in Davenport for my Grandma's 80th birthday party.
Notice how Darrin towers over the rest of us...

Uncle Shawn holding Annaliese for the first time. According to my sister, it's the first time he's
ever held a newborn. He better get used to it, he'll be a dad in September.Four generations on my mom's side.
Four generations of my dad's side.
Ian and Connor playing a combination of farm/He-Man at Easter brunch.
We hadn't seen Connor in awhile and it was so neat to see the boys play together.
Annaliese posing with her Easter basket.
Great Billie with all her great-grandkids after hunting eggs in her yard.

Annaliese getting the traditional weigh-in (nearly 11 pounds).
This scale used to sit on the counter at my grandparents' general store, where all of us were weighed on it.
It now sits in my grandma's basement since the store has closed, and I have done my best to continue the tradition.
Darrin took the day off Monday, and we headed to the zoo. Annaliese slept through most of her first zoo trip.
Ian headed to the aquarium first, his favorite spot, then to the cat house and gorillas.
Here, the bird was right up against the glass, so he decided to give it a kiss.
On Wednesday, Ian tested out our new deck box to see if there would be enough room to store all his outdoor toys.

Annaliese has smiled enough the last two days that I'm convinced she's actually
smiling at us instead of random smiles.

Memorial Day Weekend

We spent this holiday weekend visiting my grandparents in the Quad Cities. It was a very relaxing weekend- just what I needed after finishing up my last day of teaching for this school year. We got to my grandma's around 10:20 Friday night. Ian hadn't taken a nap that day nor had he slept on 4.5 hour trip. I was prepared for a rough day the next two days because of lack of sleep, but he defied the Terrible Twos label.

Saturday we spent the day with my dad's parents. The day started with Ian helping my mom and dad in the garden.
When he wasn't doing that, he was playing with the trucks Great Grandma gave him or riding his bike my parents brought along with them.

After a delicious lunch of homemade biscuits with chicken on top, Ian took a nap with Grandpa. Grandpa snores while he sleeps, and he was snoring so loudly he woke himself up. When he woke up, Ian was looking at him and laughing. After the interrupted nap, we headed to the park. Ian's favorite slide was the tallest one, and it went extremely fast. Before he could get to it, he had to get brave enough to go through the tunnel.

On Sunday, we spent the day being extremely lazy at Great Billie's house. Ian's favorite thing to play with wasn't the Legos, blocks, or cars, but the two baby dolls Grandma had sitting in a high chair. He'd rock-a-bye them and sing lullabies, put his clean diapers on them, and feed them food. I had never seen him play with dolls before and it was quite adorable watching him.
He also realized that a choo-choo drives just a few blocks past Grandma's house. As soon as he heard the whistle, he'd get extremely excited, like near tears excited, and rush to the door to get outside. We'd open up the door and rush him outside. His excitement was contagious as the engine and cars passed us. It's amazing all the things that bring him joy. In the picture he's pointing at the train in the distance.

The trip home today was different than the trip there. Ian conked out on the ride back to Omaha, and slept for quite awhile. He reminds me of Darrin when he sleeps- mouth wide open. I love seeing bits of Darrin in Ian.


Ian also learned some new words on the trip: "road work" and "Omaha." Omaha is way cuter when he says it; comes out something like OO-Nuh-Haw. As we were coming down 680, Darrin pointed out the downtown skyline and told him we were almost there. His response was, "Yay, we made it!" But, as we were turning into our neighborhood. He started screaming and freaking out in the backseat. Turns out he wanted to go to OO-Nuh-Haw, not home. It took a bit of explaining to get him calmed down, and I'm not still quite sure if he understands the fact that Ian's house is in Omaha...

The weekend was perfect because we didn't really do anything but spend time with family that we don't see nearly enough. There was no place to be, nothing we had to do, and that made it fantastic.